Missy Elliott - The Cookbook
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Rolling Stone Rating: 3
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 cohesive, most conventional album yet. The best tracks, including the techno-fied, Ciara-spiced single "Lose Control," tend to be produced by Elliott herself; the worst moments (the dire faux crunk of "Click Clack") arrive when she resorts to following trends. But Elliott does succeed in getting her freak on with...
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