Built on a mantra-like three-note riff played on a tumbi and Elliott’s breathless but authoritative rhymes (embellished with tickling percussion, feathery ululating and faux-theremin shivers out of a B-horror movie), “Get Ur Freak On,” co-written by Elliott and Timbaland, is a multilayered yet minimalist triumph of hybrid vigor—a laboratory-grade splice of Swing Mob, bhangra and the theme from Halloween. No one captured the polycultural pow of the song better than Greg Tate in an instant-classic Village Voice review of Miss E … So Addictive. “What Missy and Tim have done with ‘Freak On’ is push the Nawleans thing into Basement Bhangra territory,” Tate wrote. “The fusion of pneumatic electrofunk with breaker-wave tablas and Qawwali pursuit of higher falsetto ground is done as seamlessly and nongratuitously as you’ll hear this side of Miles Davis’ On the Corner.”
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