To say that the Chris Cornell/Timbaland collaboration is a clusterfuck is too obvious, and to say it's genius would be an enormous overstatement. It's interesting. There's something going on here.
I guess I'm stuck using metaphors as painfully cliched as the man himself does -- Cornell and Timbaland are oil and water, respectively, Cornell an oily misanthropic asshole insecure about some Unnamed Lady through the whole thing, strangling out a condescending "girrrrrl!" like a backhand across the face whenever he can and otherwise vicariously verbally abusing us with various fits of chest-puffing and cartoon-codpiecing. The conceit is brutally transparent: "THAT BITCH AIN'T A PART OF ME."
But here's where the water comes in, and the way I see it it's something more like watercolor, splashes and splotches of largely recycled musical tropes from Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake Timbaland 2.0, cod-Middle-Eastern and bouncing synth-buzz and canned-choirs and something like neon reggaeton (from, e.g., Rihanna's "Lemme Get That"). Like the abstract backdrops behind a grotesque contortion or close-up detail in an old "Ren and Stimpy" cartoon. There's humor, a party even, in the background, and Cornell's up front, all thick neck veins ("she" grabs his neck in the first song -- I bet that was kinda gross) and bloodshot eyes and foamy spittle. Timbaland does the same with Cornell's voice -- multi-tracking and harmonizing strangulations and making them almost synth-like, turning a tonal grunt into a major-seventh chord.
Thing is, this isn't a producer-auteur outing, exactly. Cornell is absolutely not interchangeable here -- in fact, Justin Timberlake's album is far more ciphery, despite the auteur nonsense that accompanied it. If JT is an auteur, so is Cornell, whether you like him or not -- there's an indelible stamp of his own authorship in this one, in a voice that struggles against its glossy sonic cage and lyrics that are...y'know, awful. But the lyrics and the voice are forceful, and resist a Timbaland production in a way that Timberlake couldn't even imagine, create a dissonance that keeps my brow furrowed.
Conceptual dissonance, too -- Cornell's not singing "Get up, get on the floor, get up, do something more" -- a standard steady-flying Timbaland dance track, with dainty little synth arpeggios and string stabs and Timbaland's processed voice going "mah mah mah mee mah mah mah." He's saying "GET OFF THE FLOOR," trying to turn the whole thing into a fucking snuff film. And at the end of the song, Timbaland kind of tries to meet him half way, throwing him what he thinks are the sound of chugging electric guitars, but ends up sounding more like "Prom Queen" in the outro.
That goes into "Ground Zero," probably my favorite track, sounds like Blake Lewis could have done the beat (though it isn't actually beatboxed), we see that when Timbaland uses HIS guitar, it sounds more like Dick Dale with all the low-end taken out. Cornell gets his pretensions out without personifying Bad Things into female form and unloading, and instead just tells us that after the world ends we're going to hang on to Ground Zero and our blood will run in the streets or something. I dunno, I can't really get a tack on what the hell he's talking about. Ahem...right...uh, let's do a scratch solo! Next track!
...Is a pretty transparent rip of "What Goes Around," and provides best evidence yet that Cornell is no Timberlake (I mean, obviously), and yes, I know this guy is a dealbreaker for 90% of the population. Rightfully so.
Anyway, don't really want to do the track-by-track thing. Chris Cornell tells us a lot about Timbaland 2.0. For one, T2.0 is a Max Martin, unable to find collaborators that can tear down his Oz curtain. Chris basically tries to rip the curtain down -- WITH HIS BIG FUCKING DICK -- and just utterly, utterly fails. So what we get is a more meta experience, we watch Chris strain those ugly neck muscles of his knowing full well what's going on behind the curtain but never actually seeing it. But we've seen the other movie, the one where they do go behind the curtain, so it kind of works that he never really brings Timbaland out; we've been there. This is more interesting.
It should go without saying that there's some indebtedness to Kanye's 808s and Heartbreak here, and sure it's a break-up album of sorts. But where Kanye coated himself in his gimmicks, put himself out there by immersing himself in something (or something), Cornell isn't immersed at all. He's arguably more vulnerable for it -- the guy has absolutely no recourse to appropriating something cool. Kanye's dorkiness peeks out now and again (and again) on Heartbreak, but Chris's general unpleasantness is omnipresent. It doesn't go anywhere. You just watch it, a gasping fish in a fun house, for an hour. And then it's over. And, in part morbid fascination and part honest amusement, you keep returning to it. At least I do, for some reason.
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