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Timbaland & Magoo - Indecent Proposal Nobody could accuse Timbaland of being lazy. In 2001 he
was at the helm for Missy Elliot's new album, much of Aaliyah's, and launched
the career of chubby white "hick-hopper" Bubba Sparxxx. He also
squeezed in the time to record his own album with the cartoonish Magoo, the
follow up to their 1997 debut, Welcome to Our World (and his own truly solo
project, Tim's Bio). This would be impressive enough, but when you consider the
quality of these offerings, it is truly staggering. I still remember sitting
in a café when the first track of Missy Elliot's second album came thumping
through the speakers. I literally dropped my coffee spoon when the beat
grabbed me by the ears and slapped me round the room. It was one of the best
things I'd ever heard, and since then I have been something of a Timbaland
completist. Quite simply, he changed the face of hip-hop, with his complex
percussive focus, lush, sexy, bass-driven keyboards, and eccentric, exotic
loops. 90% of what comes out today are pale copies, following in his wake,
and prompting his rap: "some niggaz is bitin’ my hi-hats, and all my
drum patterns, we’ll I’ve done had it. It’s time to change, get more
deranged, feels more strange." Certainly, it is truly remarkable that Timbaland could
have had so much commercial success with such an avant-garde formula, in
which almost anything goes, and sanctified formulas are scrambled beyond
recognition. He is indeed a pioneer, and makes a big deal out of his journey
from a Virginian Burger King to Global Mack Daddy. As always there are plenty of cameos from people like
Ludacris, Jay-Z, Twista, Static, Tweet, Petey Pablo, and the much-missed
aforementioned Aaliyah. The groove twists and turns through chilled-out funk,
stuttering soul, and straight-out slammin' . . . . stuff. (It was worth the
import price alone for track 9, Serious, which blows every nu-metal deadbeat
off the block.) So hats off to Timbaland, aka Thomas Crown, aka Timothy
Mosley, for pushing the boundaries, keeping a sense of humour while doing it,
and living up to impossibly high expectations. |
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