A God-awful Small Affair

Rating: 2/10 Up next: The Saturdays

It's not a secret any more that Timbaland has a tendency of late - and by 'of late' I mean anything after 2007 - to rather over-egg his production duties and leave his work with the trudging monotony of a uniquely Timbaland variety. Madonna's Hard Candy , Bjork's Volta and Jay-Z's third Blueprint were all testament to a hit-and-miss, uninspired detour that the man had taken not months after M.I.A.'s excellent Kala or Nelly Furtado's single-handed greatest hits Loose . One such artist that remained firmly rooted in Timbaland's list of successes due to a musical hiatus was Justin Timberlake. 2006's FutureSex/LoveSounds was that rarest of albums: a massive commercial success and simultaneously an artistic, slick masterpiece of pop music. It's conjured all sorts of contemporary assertions that 2006 was a better time for music than today (conveniently ignoring, of course, McFly covering the Beatles, Akon's apex and the fact that Mariah Ca...