Miss E…So Addictive

The third album from Missy Elliott has her hitting a creative peak and redefining the hip-hop sound with a brand new big bag of tricks. The enervating and unnerving Timbaland influence is in mind-blowing effect, particularly in the electro-minimalist slither and bounce and twisted sitar of ‘Get Ur Freak On’ and ‘Whatcha Gon’ Do,’ and while it’s still startlingly strange syncopation, the production here is more organic and not as defiantly alien/futuristic as their past collaborations.

As well as the bhangra thing, Miss E…So Addictive is packed with a myriad of fresh ingredients, from Jamaican dancehall vibes to synthesised 80’s melodics. African drum beats are catapulted back and forth through the mixing desk on the slinky head-spinner ‘X-tasy,’ ‘Take Away’ is a slushed-up duet with Ginuwine that has hints of early Prince in the vocoded falsettos, and there’s even a throbbing bass burst of House in the monumental dance-floor burner ‘4 My People’ featuring Eve.

Missy may be the poster-girl for busting stereotypes, but the album is by no means a rigid manifesto of female power. Exhibit A is Jay-Z’s remix/retort to the dismissive and self-explanatory ‘One Minute Man,’ while, fronting the lascivious ‘Dog In Heat,’ her more uncouth pals Redman and Method Man are granted free reign to indulge in their resolutely un-P.C. opinions of the opposite gender. But of course, the bit-playas are always overshadowed by Missy’s commanding presence.

Despite frequently painting herself as a man-eating überbitch, Missy enjoys exercising the prerogative to show her softer side, and her capabilities as a smooth soul singer are in evidence on most of the latter half of the album. She flutters her lashes, Janet Jackson style, with some coy lyrical turns on the retro-funk-up of ‘Old Skool Joint’, and plies her feminine allure through a haze of jealousy and vulnerability in ‘Step Off’.

While the more soulful tracks here can be a touch too glossy, lacking the kind of scratch and bite that makes a lot of her work so compelling, it’s apparent that Missy’s reached an amazing level of quiet confidence and comfort in her abilities. Hopefully, she won’t rest on her laurels in future, but So Addictive will be a hard hit to top. She’d better, ‘cause now she’s got us hooked.