We techno boys and girls love Aaliyah. Together with Björk she is truly a singer who is not afraid to ride the technological waves. When some years ago Dego from 4-Hero complained that as an side-effect of dance music we were creating a period without songs he spoke a bit prematurely. At that time Aaliyah second album One in a Million was building a new kind of song. You could still trace lines to standard soul music or R&B but there was definitely something different to Aaliyah's songs compared to say Macy Gray, Erykah Badu or whoever was lauded as the latest saviour of soul. An important part of this difference, other than her detached demeanour and calm almost egoless singing, could be credited to Timbaland and Missy Elliott's revolutionary production on the album's best tracks, especially the title track, a sort of slow-motion jungle love song, that became something akin to an I Feel Love for the nineties. Timbaland declared he used Aaliyah for his most futuristic tracks, calling her a "probe into the future". Yet for all the futurism her next singles Are You That Somebody? and Try Again were international number one hits, proving that melody, intricate rhythms and far-out production could come together in a beautiful pop song and even find a large public.

And so expectations were reasonably high for Aaliyah's new self-titled album, which starts of with her new single We Need A Resolution and ends with Try Again (thankfully included). We Need A Resolution is pure Timbaland genius, the rhythm track again build like clockwork, the melody Aaliyah sings has a vague Eastern feel and is duplicated as a snake-like Beltram riff in the outro. This sets the tone for an excellent first half of the album. Producer credits are rotated between Rapture, Bud'da, and J-Dub without breaking the overall flow of the album: Aaliyah's voice is technically adept (although she seldom shows off) to link all these disparate influences. Loose Rap is a great song which could have been produced by Kruder and Dorfmeister, Rock the Boat is one of Aaliyah's more seductive and explicit songs after which Timbaland drops another bomb in the form of More Than A Woman. Here Timbaland pulls the focus away from the rhythm, producing one of his more subtle tracks with a beautiful melody, subtle effects on Aaliyah's voice and great use of a very low acid bass.