The Neptunes & Timbaland in 2004

Tim had a pretty long run as a genius and imo has been phoning it in and farming out a lot of the heavy lifting to collaborators for even longer. Pharrell's peak was shorter and less consistently amazing, but he's stuck to his guns and kept making an effort for way longer.

I also appreciate that The Neptunes/Pharrell are more melodic than Timbaland, his best stuff makes up for this with how deeply layered it is but I can't listen to Miss E as much these days for this reason

although minimal Hell Hath No Fury I think is great too, but he got worse at those beats afterwards generally speaking

Hell Hath No Fury style*