Where Are You Mr. Magoo?

Last night over crab cakes and martinis my friend and I were discussing the latest top ten post on the blog. She and I are kindred spirits in the sense that somewhere around 7th grade we both become enamored with rap. That being said, she was delighted to see that Magoo had made it onto the best MC voices list. This led to a discussion about how no one remembers the before he became a mega producer, Timbaland was part of the rap duo Timbaland & Magoo. My friend even went on to say that she has “Luv 2 Luv Ya” on her ipod. Now this I found shocking, because when I go on itunes there is no record of Timbaland and Magoo. I showed her this and she admitted to her criminal downloading activities, but it still begs the question, what happened to Timbaland & Magoo.

I tried to look into this a little bit today, because you never hear about Magoo anymore. I feel like I’ve read Timbaland articles and it’s never brought up. He did give him a guest spot on “Board meeting” on 2007’s Shock Value, but there is no Magoo on 2009’s Shock Value II. Timbaland & Magoo released their first album in 1997 entitled “Welcome to Our World”. It sold over a million copies and went platinum. You may remember the songs “Clock Strikes”, “Up Jumps Da Boogie”, and the aforementioned “Luv 2 Luv Ya”. I own this album, and I’m glad I do because it’s no longer being produced in the United States. I saw a new copy of it on Amazon today for $81.00 (also saw a new one for $21.99, so who knows why you would pay $81, but the point is that’s still ridiculous). I want to know why Atlantic Records is totally holding back on them.

The other weird thing is the total lack of information on Timbaland & Magoo. They were pretty big in the whole late 90s rap scene. They were from Norfolk, VA but were part of that whole ATL crowd with Missy Elliot, Alaliyah, and Ginuwine that was huge. Now if you go to the “Timbaland & Magoo” wikipedia page it’s just a list of their discography. Poor Magoo doesn’t even get his own wikipedia page. There’s a few song and a quick bio listed on Rhapsody, but then when you click on their link to their official page, the link is broken. Their Yahoo Music profile is more a history of Timbaland’s producing track record with time with Magoo as a footnote. I mean where is Magoo? I don’t know why I find this so unsettling?

Finally, I guess that the argument could be made that Timbaland was the more talented and deserves the success that he’s had more than Magoo. Here’s my problem with that, the two solo record Timbaland has put out have relied so heavily on guest spots that I don’t think Timbaland could carry a record. He has one track off of Shock Value that is just him, “Oh Timbaland” and it relies heavily on a much loved Nina Simone track. He does the same thing on Shock Value with “Ease Off the Liquor” being the only solo track. I really like both Shock Value and Shock Value II, and I don’t mean to sound like such a Timbaland hater, because really I’m not. I just want to know why there seems to be a cover up conspiracy of Timbaland & Magoo.

Also, thank you to Pandora for having a Timbaland & Magoo station. You never let me down.