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Album Review
by A.N. Omega-man
25-11-2003
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| Missy Elliott ups sex image/CD content |
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Missy Elliott: 'This is Not A Test!'
(Elektra)
Missy Elliott harvests another non-dissent crop
Is my reality malfunctioning or it is the normal state of dystopia in my ‘Matrix’? This existentialist question comes gratis Missy ‘Misdemeanour’ Elliott who is producing music that increasingly belongs to the group of light entertainment. Sure, the cuts on ‘This is Not A Test!’ are amusing, ear-pleasing and catchy but for the subject matter…?
Track 3 on ‘… Test’ is ‘Wake Up’, a call to the Hip-hop community to do just that by stopping glorification of bling-fash-gun-drugs culture and the rhyme emphasises that it is okay not to have designer gear/mobile phone/car… Yeah, aren’t you a woman who doesn’t wear the same pair of trainers - twice?! Intellectualise my wealth, more likely.
Also, it appears that the woman can do with a boyfriend as she is obviously not getting enough of it and on quite a few tracks and, of so womanly, deriding the fact it can’t be like the first time… There is only one time for it, baby! Then, ‘Toyz’ present Missy finding ‘satisfaction’ with toys - where is that man we requested earlier?! There are few real R&B tracks, ‘I’m Perfect’ is a ballad [it’s time for Whitney Houston’s rehabilitation!] but R. Kelly guesting ‘Dats What I’m Talkin About’ is the worst kind of Prince plagiarism.
On the whole, ‘…Test’ is like, well - if one needs chick-lit, one can read it, not quite sure about chick-, or even worse, pop-rap for dancing Uth. The lead single, ‘Pass That Dutch’, is an infectious tune and utterly embarrassing, underlining the fact that Melissa is bound on exploring beats here, from the opening ‘Baby Girl’ [dedicated to Aaliyah, as the entire album], via ‘Ragtime Interlude/I‘m really Hot‘ to ‘bedroom-pumping’ [or not, as the case may be.]
When you hang out with Madonna and do a Gap commercial, one’s street-value tends to be swapped for celeb-status. Missy Elliott still remains inventive (musically) but strangely remains stuck in rhymes that are hard to connect with - ‘Have you ever been inside the mind of a virgin?/It gets hot and curious’ she claims in that Prince‘s aberration; it gets even more dubious on a hairdressing ode ‘Let Me Fix My Weave’…
There are guests, Jay-Z [on ’Wake Up’], Mary J Blige on few cuts, she drops names [Shaq, Kobe, Beckham, The Neptunes], Timbaland’s produced majority of songs (she’s taken care of the rest), Missy’s tried really hard but out of 18 cuts one finds only a decent mini-album here.
50 Cent scored big with ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’’ and that gives ghetto-kids an unhealthy aim. We’d rather if they looked up to Dead Prez and their third album, ‘Get Free Or Die Tryin’’ and not bother with this tosh… It may not be a test but the experiment appears to have failed.
6/10
A.N. Omega-man
25-11-2003
Missy Elliott’s album ‘This is Not a Test!’ is released 24 November 2003 by Elektra
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