Missy cooks up a sufficient stew

Since 1997, Missy Elliott and her production collaborator/romantic partner Timbaland have crafted some of the most daring and adventurous hip-hop to be found on this or any planet. 2003's This is Not a Test drew criticisms that, for the first time in their colorful career, Missy and Tim had fallen into a holding pattern creatively. Her latest, The Cookbook, does its damndest to assuage those fears, and surprisingly, sees Timbaland mostly purged from the mix.\nMissy spoils her fans from the get-go with back-to-back Timbaland tracks (the only two on the album), "Joy," and "Party Time," which establish an almost impossible-to-sustain groove that's awkwardly interrupted with an old-school Slick Rick guest spot. The album's preeminent single, "Lose Control," is everything a Missy single should be, with an unrelenting and obsessively catchy loop-beat that you'd swear was 100% Timbaland if Missy didn't insist she produced the track herself.\nOnce the waves from "Lose Control" subside, "My Struggles" rescues what would otherwise be a throwaway track with a solid vocal hook in the chorus, and "Click Clack" brings back the fuzzbox beat and re-energizes the record before the Neptunes break every rule in the book with "On & On." With its horrorshow organ and brain-busting blip-beat, one exits Pharrell's carnival ride with a serious contact high and wishes that more hip-hop artists would aspire to such heights. From that point, the insistent breakdown of "Can't Stop" and the closing drumline stomper "Bad Men" (featuring a cameo from rap's next big thing, M.I.A.) are mere icing on a reduced-fat cake that Timbaland's presence would have added some extra meat to.\nAs is always the case, the doldrums of Missy's albums occur when she veers sharply from edgy rhymes and bubbly beats to middling R&B crooning. The Cookbook sees this formula hold true once again, with tracks like "Teary Eyed," "Remember When," "Time & Time Again," and "4 My Man" riding a relinquished shotgun to the club rockin' numbers. Missy's only curious misstep with her new record was leaving Timbaland on the sidelines after the second track, because aside from Cookbook's few stunning singles (which Tim didn't produce), the unique force that created some of the most innovative rap tunes of the last eight years ("The Rain," "Beat Biters," "Get Ur Freak On" and "Work It" just to name a few) is sorely missed.\nRegardless, The Cookbook holds up sufficiently well enough to make it the most exciting new hip-hop record out right now, and that's what Missy has always prided herself on: being able to top half of all other rappers with her audacity alone, and most of the other half with her trippy, futuristic beats.