Timbaland & Missy Elliott have been lying very low on the radar for the past few years. There was a time you couldn’t avoid their sound either as artists or producers. Many have cried for Missy to make a full-fledged comeback for years, but Timba hasn’t been gone as long. Like Diddy, Timba overplayed his hand with a series of sound-the-same solo albums. His producing of misguided albums for Duran Duran and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell made it worse. Now he’s working his way back with stunning work on the show Empire and that same sound from the last decade sounds fresh. Bring it, and bring Nelly Furtado with you.
On that note, Nelly Furtado and Shakira, who both started out as more of your Alanis Morrisette-influenced college girls, found great success going to the pop extreme. Both have had hits and misses and seem to have worn out their welcome and sound in this arena. Here’s hoping both of them bring it down a notch on their next ventures and find that more stripped-down sound that works on their voices instead of drowning them out.
Lady Gaga’s last pop album wore very thin on even the most loyal of Monsters. She never really grew from her original sound, just kept adding onto it like an aural hoarder until we all snapped and said, “Take a break, Lady.” Like Prince in the ’80s though, you couldn’t tell her stop. She smartly did a jazz vocal side project with Tony Bennett that didn’t feel like another LG album, but more like that of an alter ego. So now, we can stretch out and play “Edge of Glory” and “Paparazzi” again and wonder what she’s up to next. Recently there was an unconfirmed demo leaked that sounds like the same old crap. Hoping it was just that—old crap—and that LG will see the light and take a new direction.
Not everyone comes back. I don’t see any fondness for Alanis, Seal, Spin Doctors or Hootie and the Blowfish on the horizon, but who knows what time and space will bring. Maybe Limp Bizkit will be next year’s new hot thing again. Nah.