Ruby vs. Missy Elliott
Good morning!
Today we’re taking a quick look at Ruby’s Short Staffed at the Gene Pool as it faces off against Missy Elliott’s Miss E: So Addictive!
Imagine, if you will, a world where, instead of venturing to America’s Dairyland, Shirley Manson decides to make a record with, say, Tricky or Thievery Corporation. Feel free to substitute Curve’s Toni Halliday here if you prefer.
If you squint hard enough, you can see it—and when you do, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what Short-Staffed at the Gene Pool sounds like. Instead of Manson, we get Lesley Rankine, late of Silverfish (instead of Angelfish…another parallel?).
In case that didn’t work, the short version is this: full-voiced female vocals, sometimes chanteuse, sometimes vixen, pouting and preening and snarling over synth grooves and post-party sounds.
The sounds? They’re as varied as the vocals they support. Together with producer Mark Walk (Skinny Puppy), they hit on everything from trip-hop to rock to Latin-ish grooves (“Lamplight”), which, to torture the analogy, feels like a slinkier version of Garbage’s “Queer.”
Some of it delves a little too far into the bleeps and bloops for my taste (“Cargo”), but the good far outweighs the bad here. Indeed, the very next track, “Sweet Is,” reminds me of the poppiest sides of Stereolab or even Pizzicato Five.
Really, whatever genre they venture through, they never forget to bring along a groove. Prioritizing the hook (writ large) takes this from a record that “forces you to pay attention” (read: not very good, but I hope there’s something in there) to something equally at home soundtracking the after-after party, your commute, or a dinner party with the coolest people you know.
Maybe even one in the Dairyland.
I’d never heard a Ruby record before just now. Oddly, I’ve heard Missy Elliott countless times. Yet the score for Short-Staffed and Miss E was a 0–0 tie.
“Get Ur Freak On” was—and is—an inescapable anthem, but I couldn’t name a single other track on the record. And fair play to Elliott—I had to laugh when I heard her let us all know about giving us “some shit that you never heard before.” I mean, it works on so many levels.
Anyway, I don’t know enough about hip-hop to speak on it intelligently, so I’ll just say this: Elliott and her partner in crime, Timbaland, come out of the lab with a very distinct sound each time they work together. I’d say when they get back to what they know, that’s when the record works best. When Elliott tries to veer into ballad territory, it stumbles.
I don’t know if it represents the Hampton Roads scene broadly speaking, or if they created it and everyone followed. Probably the latter. Whatever. She’s got bars for days, and there’s no shortage of beats here to make you scream “Hollah!
Bottom Line: Short Staffed… is the sort of record I like to root for, and anything can happen, but I think it’s going to be Missy Elliott in a rout.
Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my take? Sound off in the comments!
Kevin Sent 