Readers'd revolt if I began every review that way. Unfortunately, Missy Elliott did just that on last year's Under Construction, proclaiming the unnecessary before each track. It's nitpicking criticism, but enough reason to proclaim dark, dense This Is Not a Test as the new, and likely temporary, Best Missy Elliott Album. Time has come to examine the cultural idiosyncrasies of Virginia and discover how the region produced the core clique of pop innovators. With attention focused on New York, Manchester, Miami, and even Seattle, the notion sounded preposterous a decade ago. Now entrenched as the Ronnie and Phil of crunk, Missy and Timbaland need only compete against their past, and the occasional Neptunes track. As in any healthy muse/artist relationship, the producer reserves his next level work for the queen. The sparse scratch and siren driven "Let It Bump" hits speakers like a SWAT team on a motel door. The broken-cone bass buzz and snapping steel guitar string supersaturates "Pump It Up" with sickness. There's no way these beats were going to Kiley Dean or Magoo.
Nothing in the world rattles jeeps more than war and hip-hop. Surrounded by a Hummer, Black Panthers, bull terriers, and a burnt sky, Missy looks ready to meld the two. In this current climate, such imagery comes obviously loaded, yet she abstains from any referential iconography, such as Madonna's Che chic, or manifesto. Songs like "Let Me Fix My Weave" and the dildo ode "Toyz" throw no stones at administrations or pseudo-pundits (though I suspect Condi is quite familiar with both subjects). The imagery evokes Missy's unabashed forthrightness and Timbaland's accompanying steely, spiked clamor. A verse on "Weave" levels J.Lo's extensions with the common lady getting her hair "did," Missy's table at Madre's be damned. No veils of cute or coy or irony are pulled before her façade. Timbaland laces no trendy bhangra or dancehall into his minimal assaults, even those on which Elephant/Beenie Man guest. Video vixens may pant and rub themselves to stumps before approaching the true sexuality of a woman who's run out of patience for those refusing to dance, drop their posturing, or go down on her.
But it's the album's end-to-end strength that speaks the most-- against hip-hop artists who fail to make solid albums and those rock idiots who say it can't be done. 16 tracks clock in under 60 minutes with meaningful mini-skits, intro, and outros. Even the plethora of guests inconspicuously slip into the mix. There's no way the two stars could be outshined, though Nelly redeems his crassly commercial career with his "go go Gadget dick," while Jay-Z brilliantly rhymes "rectum" with "David Beckham" on "Wake Up".
As that track crushes like a submarine hull crunching over sonar pings, Missy says, "You ain't got a cellular phone/ It's all right/ If you gotta wear them jeans again/ It's all right." Even when backed up by the Kings of Bling, Missy continually cuts the crap. Everyone is invited to the party, even those getting dissed. Those familiar with Missy through the radio only need know this: even the skyscraping "Pass That Dutch", a masterwork of robot ropeskipping riding unbelievably deep bass that turns subwoofers into hair dryers, seems a mere hillock over its surroundings.
