Timbaland

The brains behind Missy, Aaliyah, Nelly Furtado’s ‘Maneater’ and Justin Timberlake’s ‘SexyBack’, Timbaland has masterminded most of the amazing futurist hip-pop of the last decade. He’s also ballsed a good deal of it up by insisting on rapping himself: something he really isn’t very good at, and he knows it. It’s a problem that no amount of A-list guest contributors (Kanye, Elton, Fall Out Boy, The Hives) can gloss over. The beats here are as staggering as ever, but of an indulgent 19 tracks, none sound like they were good enough to give to anybody else: creatively charitable for sure, but the fact that the staggering music he’s made with Björk has been left off for a future project tells you all you need to know.

Dan Martin

5 out of 10