Not that Tim half-asses anything on the production end. Simone's reconstructed voice is a sinister hook ('Oh Timbaland, where you gonna run to?'), and Tim's answer to this haunting, retribution-of-God threat (a quickly tossed-off 'nowhere'), is a sign of the hubris to follow. It's a hell of a way to start things off, even assuming you don't care that a song about a man futilely trying to escape his transgressions is being appropriated so Tim can issue death threats and brag about his private planes. The beat's built on the same piano hook (from Nina Simone's 'Sinnerman') that Kanye West pillaged for Talib Kweli's 'Get By'- he's just made it more manic, releasing some Dirty South tension with Shaq-hand-sized claps and Catfish Collins chicken-scratch guitar. But while solo Timbaland's always been a mixed bag, Timbaland Presents Shock Value is more mediocre than it has any right to be, filled with overreaching pretense and phoned-in vacancy- either trying too hard, or not hard enough.Īlmost everything potentially great and really wrong about Shock Value is exhibited in leadoff track 'Oh Timbaland'. His recent bodybuilding obsession, his divisive, grandstanding mini-sets during the Justin Timberlake tour, and his forehead-smack of a beef with Scott Storch (?)(!) have made for great blog-snark gossip fodder, but they don't necessarily signal any kind of creative decline, especially after the juggernaut year he had in '06. When Tim's shit goes wrong, though, it's harder to get to the root of the problem. The other main factor in his genius, as anyone who's had a radio on at any point in the last decade knows, is his ability to integrate unexpected niche-genre sonics most hip hop and R&B producers wouldn't steer towards- bhangra, jungle, trance- and use them for a kind of universal club futurism that, since it fits well in damn near every place people dance, makes for an easy route to chart and cultural dominance. This might be one of the reasons he's considered by most trainspotter pop fiends to be more of a genius than those other two even when Tim runs his mouth, it's typically been innocuously catchy- even complementary- enough to keep the production's strengths at the forefront.

He hasn't spent more time being a pop icon than a musician, hasn't suffered from any major dry spells of creative entropy and, most importantly, has known enough to let his beats do most of the heavy lifting. When it comes down to the big three producer-MCs who have defined club-friendly rap over the past decade- Diddy, Pharrell and Timbaland- Tim's the one who's been best able to rein in his self-indulgent tendencies.

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