“Somebody needs to tell em they can’t do it like I can” So goes the latest single from Timbaland’s Shock Value, “Give it to Me,” and it’s no lie. Timbaland isn’t only one of the most talented and prolific producers ever (yes, ever), but one with the power to turn a former Teen People posterboy into an Urban Outfitters fashion icon and a fading Barnes & Noble songstress into a Gwen-meets-Shakira ghettofabulous pop idol with merely a drop of a few carefully placed beats. Though one of hip-hop’s most powerful uber-producers, Timbaland has in the past always managed to set himself apart from his peers with his enormous talent-to-self-indulgence ratio. But now enter Shock Value.

Timbo is off to a good start with “Oh Timbaland,” building on a sample from Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman,” with Nina’s cries cleverly morphed into “Oh Timbaland, where you gonna run to?” It’s the only track on Shock Value where Timbaland has full possession of the limelight, and it’s incidentally one of the album’s best, most focused tracks. But once “Oh Timbaland” has shifted into the moderately fun, albeit messy “Promiscuous” rewrite, “Give it to Me,” one of Shock Value’s biggest problems becomes all too apparent; it lacks any sort of cohesion. What made previous Timbaland projects (especially Future Sex/Love Sounds) so attention-grabbing is that they had a singular sonic direction, but there’s no sense of that here. As Timbaland skips between Bollywood disco on “Bombay,” a painfully morose duet with She Wants Revenge on “Time,” and “One & Only” with Fall Out Boy (a match that was never, ever meant to happen), the results are far more confusing than listenable.

But let’s face it; in a world ruled by the 99-cent single, Shock Value makes sense in a weird kind of way. Considering the diverse array of guest artists and musical styles here, listening to Shock Value in its entirety can be jarring, but its individual songs are likely to appeal to a far wider variety of listeners. Shameless commercialism? Of course, but really, who needs an album’s worth of proof that Timbaland can sell other bands’ records?