New Missy

Whoa, Missy's doing hundred year old folk tunes?

well, it will be out near the holidays... for alot of artists its cashing in time.

And missy did the 'pass the dutchie' on supa dupa fly..

Sounds like the anime/Pokemon version of this character:

http://www.c64gg.com/Images/G/Gorf.mp.gif

Is the chorus sampling that old Musical Youth pop reggae song "Pass the Dutchie"?

In another conversation about this song I said the following:

"HO. LY. SHIT.

How the hell does she kick my ass even more with every successive release???????????

[...]

If it were at all possible to put a song in your pants and make love to it, this is the song that would put YOU in its pants and scream "GET TO WORK SEX SLAVE!" (I'm sure that when I figure out exactly what I meant by that metaphor it will be the most insightful thing ever written.)"

"Toys" is sadly only the second best song this year about sex toys, although its talkie bit at the end is great beyond words.

The answer is 'no', of course...

Also -- beat for new single sounds like Grindin'.

anyone picked up Tim's Under Construction II? it has some pretty great tracks and a bunch of other paint by number tim tracks

ptd is between them on the album too (they're 1-2-3)

I love the trash-can beat on "Wake Up" but the Jay part is relatively forgettable; his "fuck Chuck Phillips and Bill O' Reilly / If you try and stop hip hop, we all gonna rally" was one of my favorite bits on Under Construction.

After one listen, the album sounds pretty terrific, though I'm not so crazy about the R&B-ish numbers. Judging from both the pictures in the CD booklet (plus the hot pants in the "Pass that Dutch" video) and her lyrical content (she's always been sexually assured, of course, but here she seems much more in full-on, unapologetic man-eating mode than ever before--kinda reminds me of Dry/Rid of Me-era Polly Harvey), she's quite proud of her slimmer, sexier New Look. And why shouldn't she be?

"pass the dutch" has been steadily growing on me (as "milkshake"'s lustre fades).

It's good Jay-Z's verse is being called "ok, but phoned in" because at least his tendency to talk OVER THE HOOK AS IF HIS VOICE IS THE MOST AMAZING SOUND IN THE WORLD really is not good. (NB: calling it a "tendency" is not really that accurate, in fairness).

no one seems to have spoken much on timbaland and magoo under construction 2, is that the remix one?

xpost. read that as kent brockman.

related question: is it silly to be listening for / getting excited about "b-boys on e" elements? a friend of mine (who doesn't really like rap or dance music) was hating on the album last night, saying "it all sounds like egyptian lover". i told him he was missing the point, but i have this fear that i'm missing the point too, getting excited that timbaland sounds like a funkier, more competent andrea parker.

And sure, wake up sounds like grime, and grime sounds like hip-hop. Only territorialism can blind people to this obvious fact.

Toyz is good in a cheesy disco-hop/Hip-House way.
and the Don't Be Cruel / Push it vocal is good...
The Timbaland production is intersting for the way he's starting to absorb all these sounds / techniques that sound more at home on Minimal Techno or Idm etc. (DSP influence)

Let it Bump, Paul Revere / beastie Boys flow re-use is classic. and inspired. (is this a common thing to do in hip-hop? reminds my of the Riddim / versioning in dub?)

overall there is such a retro feel to it. the scratching especially?

its a standard timbaland beat played by some dirty cavernouse reverb drums. / ...

Maybe I'll warm to it though.

Under Construction might be my favorite album of all time. I'm pretty sure it is. I think I'd rather listen to Supa Dupa Fly and I love it a lot but Under Construction just gives me a really good feeling and there are other reasons, too, probably. It's very good. And someone said, 'It's very, very bad that you like Under Construction that much. Because it just sounds like a compilation of soundtrack songs and outtakes and stuff.' I like that all Missy albums sort of sound like concept albums or something-- Not that, really, but. I like the way all the songs sound the same. And I thought Under Construction had that, the linkingness if not the all-songs-sound-the-same-ness.

--this really does sound like a compilaton of soundtrack songs and outtakes or whatever and I like all of the songs but it doesn't sound like a good Missy album, I guess, and I feel bad about saying I don't like it that much but I wish it was different and I want to listen to something else instead.

when they did that shit
all Riverdancing around;
Flatley? I flatlined!

Less strangeness on this new one, more craft. Quality work, though there's only one track ('let it bump') that really makes me turn the volume the rest of the way up. It's not a let down, though; she always sounds great.

I'm not a huge Missy fan anyway, so it's not a huge let down for me or anything.

To me, the "R&B stuff" on This is Not a Test! sounds like prince slow jams, and that's sure-as-hell fine with me. I’m amazed by Missy’s ability to keep pace with guest stars ranging from dancehall to R&B. Tim’s production is still tight as hell.

The low points of this record: when Mary Blidge sings “I am Mary Blidge,” Nelly re-treading the Hott in Herre rap again, Pump it Up and Pass that Dutch mimicking the bass rhythm of Work It.

High Points: The insistent bass line on Fix My Weave, the tiny delay between the bass and snare hits in It’s Real, the Superstition-like bassline of Toyz.

That was really dumb,
it sounds better all the time
now a year later

This Is Not a Test
will end up the same I think,
next year's "last year's jam"

haven't heard this one. still think miss e... is the best. when come back bring shiny polyrhythmic dance-pop-hip-hop-rnb summation records, plz

brilliant! the way i buy music that's like the story of my life! all my favorite music this year is stuff from 2002 that i'm just now managing to track down.

it's now all about
force of personality
and she's got SO MUCH!

actually my fave thing is probably the intro, which is like a summation of Timbaland styles -- those circa '97 shakers, crisp snares from the Under Construction era, dark keys sounding reminiscent of Da Real World...

this sounds SO MUCH BETTER to me than anything on her last three albums (save for hot boys and take away) - its filled with meaty fulfilling sonic goodness, just so *tasty* with all sorts of fresh weirdness...it sounds really ALIVE with lush flavor whereas the last album sounded really stale and hollow by the third listen... the ballads are incredible!! how can u not get goosbumps w/ these sizzlin' slowjams - esp the R Kelly "Dats What I'm Talking About" (probably the most amazing track) which i expected to garner some lurve around here considering how mr Kelly's incredible run of singles this year got a lot of attenion (and rightly so)...it just feels someone shoving a hot dripping CREAMY fudgesicle into your mouth and you're overwhelmed and gagging and loving it... now compare this to under construction's inarguably lame "nothing out there for me' or tlc-guested "can you hear me now"...yuck that makes me gag for different reasons!! the ringing and echoing piano beat, the whirring computery sounds during the breakdown, the "fo shizzle my nizzle" phrase convincingly thrown in the middle of a lovejam and not sounding out of place.... plus it opens with the line "have you ever been in the mind of a virgin, it gets hot and curious" ooooh...how does this song not excite u?!?????/ this is NOT a "soggy ballad," its the acme of luvjammery, OKay??

plus, unlike ...hell all the other albums, it thankfully does not end with a desperate religiousy or lovelorn ballad, but something really jazzy and dazzling like "i'm not perfect," which sounds Missy's underrated pipes ...and it doesn't have really monotonous sounding drones like "slide" which i hated last time around, and is not smothered in old-school nostalgia like that album either, but only slyly evokes it here and there like that "push it" reference on "don't be cruel," - wow what a track! it goes from Monica's voice rubbing up against a wicked groove to collapsing into this crazy-as-hell Elaphant Man splash that is impossible to not want to move around to...really this is probably her MOST DANCEABLE ALBUM EVER. then that goes directly into this ragtime interlude, wtf? its incredible! counter this with the insanely annoying "missy elliott exclusive" snippets preceding each song and the really boring "yo, i miss you Aaliyah and 9/11 was bad and we miss the old days" interludes on Under Construction which were more like really boring interminable SPEECHES, sheesh. i guess thats one way of comparing hip-hop albums: which has the better/more entertaining interludes? haha... what makes no sense is that some of these "interludes" are longer than the actual tracks! like "the spelling bee" interlude...but the good thing is all of them actually bring something to the album, including the mary ones, which bookend the whole thing tunefully..

i don't like the nelly track as it just sounds old really fast, andyou can hardly even *notice* that Jay-Z is on "wake up," its really him just walking through the motions...that track itself is kind of a let-down anyways. and "it's real" kind of sags. otherwise the whole thing is stellar and as rightly noted above, admirably consistent for the first time since her debut: no really skip or cringe-worthy tracks. yeah some are more exciting than others ... but you can running-man or slow-dance to all of it. i like a lot of little touches here and there (and this is just after 2 listens), like the "ting!" sound substituting for "fuck" i presume, in the "don't give a __" phrase on "keep it movin," the L L line in "i'm really hot," the way her voice sounds so sassy in the amusingly menacing "let me fix my weave" (with the Bennifer references!) and all of "toyz," which is straight out the dopest dance-beat she's ridden since "izzy izzy ahh"!!!

there isn't the overwhelming sense of barrier breaking that there used to be

um, and why is that a bad thing ? excepting the groundbreaking singles, i really don't think there was all that much "barrier breaking" on any of the last three albums...am i alone in feeling that way?

yes, she may have reached some sort of "innovation plateau" w/ timbaland at this point, but she's clearly enjoying herself at her very prime here, and it's a lot more confident and satisfying than any of her recent albums, imo (i really disagree w/ that Spin review - she sounds much happier and well-adjusted here than last time) - albums that had earth-shattering singles but uneven humdrum content that could never reach the height of those few tracks. this doesn't have any jaw-dropping single like that; almost of it is impressive on a constant level, and if that means "craft" then whatever. it makes me horny! (or whatever Mr Perry said about sex slaves, etc :)

um, and why is that a bad thing ?

basically, i'm wondering why are we using a few "seminal" singles to judge all of her future albums, since i don't think thats really fair. and contrary to all my drooling above, i don't even know if this would make my top ten of the year anyway since there have been soo many good albums this year!! its just that i wanted to defend it from the ho-hum-zz reception it got here

i know it's kind of much to expect, but i feel like there really was this sense of a concerted effort to present a new template for hip-hop with each album until now. maybe the singles stood apart but the other album tracks were clearly made of the same mold, whereas this one just sounds all over the place. i'm not saying that is a big deal or anything, but a lot of my enjoyment of the previous discs came from that sense of the 'larger implications' ... i don't think i'm alone either.

i should listen to it some more anyhow.

...did you want me to give it a name or something? Supa Dupa Fly WAS urban music in 1997. Da Real World obv a baby step forward, but i should've said it was internally consistent where Test isn't.

re: Under Construction ... UM?! have you ever heard old-school boom-bap twisted that way?

It was also being echoed/reflected in everything Timbaland was producing at that time, including Aaliyah, Ginuwine and his stuff with Magoo, all of which came out before _Supa Dupa Fly_.

i realize that, but at the risk of being rockist i'd argue that it took an entire album produced by Tim, a set of tracks that could interact and fill in each other's gaps over the course of an hour, to flesh out the whole aesthetic. besides which the sum effect of that album strikes me as a lot more compelling than a group of singles, even ones that 'echoed/reflected' each other. "One In A Million" sure, but it wasn't until a year later when Missy and that video and the album came out that the radio blew wide open IIRC.

just try to disprove this.

What, like the Ginuwine album?

I've decided that the sonics on TINAT are fine - it's the lack of good tunes and hooks that is problem. Like, "Keep It Moving" isn't any less startling than "Dog In Heat" or "Bring The Pain", but Missy's vocals on the latter two are more bristling with energy, effortlessly melodious and compulsively memorable. And maybe it's the same with the grooves too. I risk sounding like Geir but I think that in the rush to acclaim Missy and Timbaland's great beats people tend to forget how wonderfully tuneful they always were.

One thing I miss especially are the smooth R&B backing vocalists Missy used to use, as the interplay between Missy's own (formerly?) understated singing voice and a more professional melismatic backer was always one of my favourite things on Missy records (classic examples of this are "All 'n My Grill", "Hot Boys" and "Play That Beat" - and the heavy repetition of this trick on Da Real World forms a big part of why I love that record so much).

It's certainly the most beat-happy thing she's done up to now, and much more aptly lives up to the "club Missy album" crown that was bestowed on Miss E...So Addictive at the time; in my opinion, *that* album was really bogged down with uninteresting ballads, with the studio effects coming across as attention-getting and gimmicky. Also, it got wearysome hearing about everyone frothing over the supposed "bhangra"-ness of it, but as someone who's listened to enough of the real thing, it seemed more like the idea of bhangra was being used as an inspiration for hip-hop beats rather than the utilization of a true "bhangra sound" (which is more Mundian/Beware of the Boys, etc) - I know that was the point, but I got tired of the hype! Here, all of the weird noises seem fluid and spacey and organic enough to sound like they really deserve to be flying and bouncing around the way they do, since the entire songs are bouncing or stuttering around like that. The beats aren't secondaryto anything, they are upfront and center and belong there. There isn't the dried, hollowed-out feeling from the last album's uber-sparseness either (such as "Slide"); the songs feel succulent and fresh, ready to be dipped into and tasted... its a wet album!

I think that Miss E is reaching a sort of creative peak with this one, and again as proof I point to the off-beat touches you might not notice right away. Like the way she starts reciting the entire alphabet in the Spelling Bee (Interlude) and when she gets to P spells out p-u-s-s-y...why didn't I notice this last night?! And if you love her singing voice you just can't go wrong with Dat's What I'm Talking About or I'm Not Perfect, or even It's Real which I now dig. Dig in!

"Slide" is more sparse than "Let It Bump", "Wake Up", "It's Really Hot"???

I thought that was "Lick Shots", "Scream AKA Itchin", "4 My People"...?

I thought that was "Lick Shots", "Scream AKA Itchin", "4 My People"...?

...I just feel like she achieves it a lot more smoothly here. It's less self-conscious

i completely overlooked that one, but that one still sounds too close to standard boom-bap despite the hi-hat and syncopated action, whereas the early stuff with Missy feels more fluent. this doesn't have anything to do with why i like every Missy album before Test, so you can keep on being anal without me....

In what universe was that my point?

The difference I suspect is that the Neptunes still sound like they can hold more than one idea in their head at the one time (Timbaland can too when he's working with Bubba, of course). The sick harpsichord!

Boy, this has aged very well. This is her punk album: lots of three-minute bangers, no frills, one after the other. Her best.