After a while, redefining pop music on an annual basis must get a little wearying. Missy Elliott and Tim 'Timbaland' Mosley have raised the bar so many times over the past few years that you can't help feeling that the most radical thing they could do in 2003 would be to release an unradical record.
'This Is Not A Test' isn't quite that, though it does show a few signs of this preternaturally talented duo slowing down a little. For a start, Timbaland excuses himself from a handful of tracks, leaving the production duties in the capable - if relatively uninspired - hands of Missy and a couple of associates. His absence allows Missy to indulge in more conventional R&B, though on 'Dats What I'm Talkin' About' her duetting partner, R Kelly, still sounds perilously out of his depth. On 'It's Real', meanwhile, she tries the kind of piano ballad we'd normally associate with Alicia Keys, to curious effect: Missy in the context of normality sounds awkward, out of place.
What it proves is that this unearthly talent is not yet ready for the straight life, that Missy Elliott is naturally suited to the inspired surrealism of Timbaland's beat designs. Unlike the old-skool mutations that packed 2002's 'Under Construction', this year's collection of Timsounds are spacier, weirder. 'Pass That Dutch', the first single, is a cautious introduction, being essentially a sequel to 'Work It'.
For proof that Missy and Timbaland have moved ahead of the pack yet again, the astonishing 'Wake Up' would've been a better choice, with its ocean trench blips, clanking beats, disorienting echoes, rewind effects and vague air of early Autechre. Worth noting, too, that while it's been widely reported that Jay-Z references David Beckham in his guest verse, he actually rhymes our captain's name with "rectum" for maximum poetic effect.
Melodies don't play a big part on this one, for the most part. The focus, instead, is on Timbaland's terrifying industrial booms and beats, influenced by abstract electronica, Afrobeat and, especially, Jamaican dancehall. On 'Don't Be Cruel' he serves up a Diwali-ish rhythm for the visiting Beenie Man, while Missy and Monica quote Salt'N'Pepa. For 'Let It Bump', he strips everything back to a heartbeat drum and violently edited siren to beat the Neptunes at their own game.
Missy, in the meantime, is referencing her latest idol MC Lyte and, as usual, investing every line with her breathtaking vivacity. Like Timbaland's sonic innovations, there's a risk that we take the candid and hilarious way she talks about sex for granted; notwithstanding the paean to vibrators that is 'Toyz', there's nothing here materially ruder than much of 2001's 'Miss E...So Addictive'. But this is what she does, really: talk clever, talk dirty, talk funny and, with Timbaland's dedicated assistance, annually expand the possibilities of what pop music can sound like.
Superstars can get into worse routines, you can only conclude.
