PAP INDOLGENCE

Timbaland's forthcoming artist album, Shock Value, has been mainly disappointing in my cursory listen today. Particularly the entire last 2/3 of it stinks (cringe-worthy duets with Fall Out Boy & She Wants Revenge especially). But there are a few moments early on worth hearing. Among them are lead single, "Give It To Me" with Justin Timberlake & Nelly Furtado -- the only real radio-play receiving banger I've been feelin' in the past few months -- and another only-in-the- Timbaland-production-book number, "Way I Are".

Think of it as "My Love" redux. The same gigantic trance-rays of death make an appearance, combined with cold exotic synths and an eminently mixable house beat. Kinda like the type of dark club music The Knife would make if they grew up in Miami instead of the icy Nordic. Here, if we could only replace the sorely predictable phrasing of R&B nobody Keri Hilson and "baybee-gurl" -isms of D.O.E. with Karin Dreijer and um... somebody hotter?!? then we'd all be in pop heaven. If I can find a instrumental, I will post it stat - you just get your producer friends ready to do some major surgery and resurrect this potential banger with an acapella worth the beat. In the mean time we can all eagerly await to hear what he does with Bjork...

Timbaland feat. Keri Hilson & D.O.E. - Way I Are


Also worth posting is another of Timbaland's recent productions from Young Jeezy's Thug Motivation 102, brilliantly showcasing both his continuing a) fascination with mouth percussion, and b) irreverence for using regular hi-hat sounds as predictable placards of time.

Young Jeezy feat. Timbaland - 3 A.M.