The Last Word: Timbaland’s Shock And Yawn

(Ed. note: What used to be Idolator’s Record-Review Revue is now The Last Word, a weekly feature in which we round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the week’s biggest new-music reviews. Today’s entry is the just-released Timbaland Presents Shock Value):

– “As bad as this album is, it’s not offensive enough to worry about for too long; if its contents were split up into 17 singles and B-sides and one-shots and scattered across the charts for 15 months, it’d hardly be worth worrying about. It’s just that it’s disconcerting sometimes to be confronted with an entire album’s worth of evidence that geniuses can fuck up, just like everyone else.” (4.1) [Pitchfork] – “The guests’ main job is usually just to adorn whatever Tim has in mind, which makes sense – no one can say he doesn’t have lots of ideas floating around that big noggin. But for now, those ideas sound better on the radio, not on this album.” (THREE STARS) [Rolling Stone] – “And there’s also the inexplicable album-closer ‘2 Man Show,’ on which Timbaland talks and talks over Sir Elton’s piano vamping, with a vocal choir chiming in to note about how much they’re loving said show — even though it sounds like an unfinished demo. ‘Don’t it sound good to ya, don’t you agree?’ Timbo says. We’ll have to agree with Scott Storch on this one: No, not really.” [Washington Post]