My 125 Favourite ’90s Hip-Hop Albums
#116 Timbaland and Magoo - Welcome to Our World
“Timbaland, understand / Kickin’ the fly beats for all my fly fans / Not Peter Piper, but Peter Pan / Beat guaranteed to make you dance / People wanna know where I where I get my rhythm / Rhythm comes from the thing called wisdom / Wisdom is the thing that comes from the dome / When the clock strikes twelve, it’s on”
Sorry, Group Home, all is forgiven. These guys really are shitty rappers - their flow is nonexistent - rapping at like three words a minute, and yet still not being able to keep to the beat. Timbaland hasn’t really yet developed the singy-speaky vocal style that he uses today, and thus, sounds even more awkward than usual. The lyrics are horrific - the quote above is, rather disturbingly, one of the better examples from this album. The vocal interplay in weird, primarily I think because Magoo has a voice that sounds like he spends all day sucking helium balloons (don’t do this kids, it can lead to asphyxia), and Timbo has a ridiculously deep voice that he actually seems to put through a low-pass filter to make it even deeper.
So what makes this album great? The first thing, as you would probably guess, is the wonderful, eclectic beats. This is early Timbaland - think Aaliyah’s One in a Million, Ginuwine’s The Bachelor, or Missy Elliott’s Supa Dupa Fly - metronomic hi-hats, jerky drums lifted straight from drum ‘n’ bass, and tinny, squelchy synth bass. It’s a sound pretty much entirely divorced from what he’s doing today, but it’s still highly effective. It’s almost enough to forgive him for sampling the fucking Knight Rider theme on ‘Clock Strikes (Remix)’.
The second thing is the weird, incredibly catchy hooks. It’s hard to describe in writing how odd so many of these songs’ refrains are - generally sung by either Timbaland, or Static from the group Playa, they’re woozy, often off-key, and yet extremely hummable. There are also some good guest spots from most of Timbo’s key collaborators at the time.
So, yes, this is essentially a dumb, dated party album. An awesome, weird, inventive, idiosyncratic dumb party album. What more could you ask for?
