While Missy Elliott cooks with the Neptunes, Timbaland is out to prove he can produce an omnipop multiformat blockbuster in the style of Gwen Stefani's Love Angel Music Baby — but without Gwen. Instead, he passes the mike to Canadian chirper Nelly Furtado, a mighty strange choice for an R&B goddess, but that's Timbaland for you. Furtado had a dodgy 2001 pop hit you might remember, the ornithologically themed "I'm Like a Bird." But she disappeared instantly, and by now you'd expect her to be on a reality show, sharing a Miami Beach condo with Meredith Brooks and Paula Cole. Timbaland brings her back on Loose to scat her quirky high-school-musical vocals over his mostly Eighties beats — what's he been listening to, Ready for the World? Highlights include their garish sex duet "Promiscuous" and the reggaeton rip "No Hay Igual." "Maneater" is not a Hall and Oates cover, but it bumps hard enough to qualify as a sequel, and that's high praise indeed.

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."