Missy Elliott

For her sixth album, the inimitable Missy Elliott gives fans another stellar collection of neck-breaking party jams that embrace the old school while taking hip-hop to brand new levels. Bubbling production, witty lyricism and soulful singing create a bouillabaisse of funkiness; cameos by Slick Rick, Grand Puba and Mary J. Blige spice it up even more.

Missy Elliott's sixth album marks a departure from what has been a reliably scrumptious
recipe: Timbaland, whose future-shock beats were as essential to Elliott's brain-bending
sound as her schoolyard-chant flow, produces only two tracks here, one of them the
woozy Mike Jones collaboration "Joy." In Timbaland's absence, usual-suspects hitmakers
such as Rich Harrison and Scott Storch step in -- and the result is Elliott's least co... More >

On this benchmark album that half the beatoisie will sleep on because it has no "Work It" and Timbaland, after all, was the genius (which he was)--this benchmark album that given the vagaries of fashion could initiate a permanent commercial decline--Elliott showcases the musical health of African American pop. Oldschoolfreshbeathiphopr&b--run through Elliott's considerable talent and good heart or reasonable facsimile, these are meaningless categories. Elliott's disinclination to give it up to gangsta's thrill cult or black pop's soft-focus porn, plus her proven ability to work a good beat when she gets one, leads her naturally to a collection that ebbs and flows, peaks and dips, and pokes fun at any canon of taste you got. It's vital beginning to end--vital even when it's misguided, a matter on which your judgments may differ from mine, fine with her. (Grade - A-)