Missy Elliott: The Cookbook : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

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 some of her new collaborators: With its doomy synth bass and Arkanoid sound effects, the pummeling, Neptunes-produced "On and On" suggests that Elliott isn't done inventing pop's future.