Timbaland seems to be dividing opinion a great deal lately. Some would have it that the praise he�s received from mainstream rock and pop critics since Missy�s �So Addictive has lead to a complacency perhaps, a lack of rhythmic invention, a dearth of new directions in which to propel the artists he works with, and few truly head-wrenching �what the fuck was that?� moments over the last three years. Others would have it that, even if not accelerating his own game, he�s still way ahead of everybody else, and that�s all that matters; and even if he has been �canonised�, he�s managed to avoid the kind of rhetoric of authenticity that can afflict other hiphop producers/rappers/performers/etcetera crossing over to a �rock� audience. Maybe the Diwali riddim did make him double take and panic that dancehall producers had out-done him at his own game for a while there� Either way, Mr Mosley is still one of the most exciting producers working in music today, and one particular track on Petey Pablo�s recent Still Writing In My Diary: 2nd Entry album proves it.

�Get On Dis Motorcycle� may not be the most nuts, onomatopoeic beat that Tim�s ever produced, but the texture and hooks running rampant over the top of the crunk thump send the weirdness-o-meter through the roof. A looped, chattering, drone-like sample of a chant in which words are indecipherable, possibly eastern, possibly sung by children, buzzes through the heart of the track, resting chaotically on the edge of pure noise but still maintaining a sense of melodic direction and a strong, intangible hook, while Petey Pablo (and later Bubba Sparxx) waxes blue collar jump rhymes over the top (�I was a bad muthafucka / Slightly retarded�?!). As if this wasn�t weird enough, at the end of each chorus Tim fires up what I assume must be a (small) motorcycle but which could equally be a chainsaw such is it�s pitch and timbre, and riffs with its revs quite extraordinarily for added found-sound sonic-delirium head-fuckery.

If �Get On Dis Motorcycle� brings anything to mind (other than Timbaland himself, and perhaps a hint of Qawwali about the tone of the vocal sample/hook), it�s �Starbound: All Burnt Out And Nowhere To Go� from D.I. Go Pop by Disco Inferno, where a chattering, noisy vocal sample is looped into a delirious, push-me-pull-you hook. ��Motorcycle� though has a decade of musical and technological innovation backing it up; this is a track you could easily imagine getting radio and/or club play, whereas Disco Inferno�s previous take on the idea exists fully in the realm of the experimental / avant-garde / ignored.

Which makes it even more tragic that, ten years hence, alternative rock still hasn�t, by and large, even attempted to engage with the now, let alone the future, and even more remarkable that people like Timbaland have taken hold of the future and made it the norm.

Oh yeah, did I mention that, forgetting everything else, �Get On Dis Motorcycle� is bloody fantastic?

It is.