Cook Book

Missy's new album is called "The Cook Book" and should be coming out July 5th. Here is the tracklist.

1. Joy -- featuring Mike Jones
2. Partytime
3. Irresistible Delicious -- featuring Slick Rick
4. Lose Control -- featuring Ciara
5. My Struggles -- featuring Grand Puba
6. Melt Down
7. Right One For Me
8. On and On -- featuring Pharrell
9. We Run This
10. Time and Time Again
11. Gotta Move On -- featuring Tweet
12. Mami
13. 4 My Man
14. Teary Eyed -- featuring Tweet
15. Smash the Place
16. Juicy

Its nice to hear that, weak-ass reunion albums aside, Grand Puba's been making some higher-profile comeback attempts lately. He's always been my favorite rapper from Brand Nubian and he sounded great on the Beanie Sigel album. Good to see Mike Jones making the rounds as well. The two leaked tracks sounded pretty exciting to me, particularly the way the three main voices on "Lose Control" play off of each other so well: Fatman Scoop's rowdy hype-man schtick, Ciara's soft tranquility and Missy careening in between. "On and On" sounds like a video game. Its also good to hear that Missy's not doing as much with Timbaland this time; her last album was easily the weakest of all her releases, the Missy-timbaland formula weighing both artists down, and with a few exceptions ("Let Me Fix My Weave," "I'm Really Hot,") it was pretty dull. But the playfulness of the first two singles for Cook book gives me hope. If yr curious, my favorite Missy album is ...So Addictive (the secret weapon is the supremely sparse disco of "Old School Joint," where Timbo does the same deep bass/soaring atmospherics that worked so well on Ginuwine's "Pony"). Da Real World is runner-up (the collab with B.G. and Juvenile is kind of sublime, and makes me wish they'd done more with golden-era Timbaland, even though these days I'm glad both are working with dirtier, grimier production).