Hard Candy Review

On Hard Candy, she’s like an aging master thief sneaking into the temple of pop goodies for one last big score. Album 11 is good-naturedly smutty, not confrontationally nasty, but it’s a veritable filth bath compared to the C-SPAN sermons and confessional strumming of 2003’s dreadful American Life or the woozily self-actualized club trance of 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor. “Sex with you is so incredible,” she chirps on the sunny “Incredible,” as producer Pharrell Williams emphasizes the sentiment by yelling, “Boom! Boom!”
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Dominance isn't just a fetish for Madonna, it's her religion. It's no accident that she opened each show on 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor tour by clenching a riding crop in her hand, jerking a gagged male dancer around by a leather leash. And she never puts down the whip: Since 1986's True Blue, Madonna has claimed writing or production credits on every one of her songs, even when she worked with dance-music artists such as William Orbit, Mirwais Ahmadzaï and Stuart Price.
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You've seen the video for ''4 Minutes,'' Madonna's flirty duet with Justin Timberlake. Perhaps you've heard that roughly half of her new album, Hard Candy, was produced by the Neptunes, with the remainder entrusted to the team of Timbaland, Nate ''Danja'' Hills, and Timberlake. Maybe you know that Kanye West pops up on one song (''Beat Goes On''). Between the fountain-of-youth dalliances and hookups with hip-hop kingpins, we know what you're thinking: Just how massive is this midlife crisis of hers?
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Madonna makes producers, producers don't make Madonna. The diva plucked William Orbit, Mirwais and Stuart Price from electronic music obscurity, meshing her own pop sensibility with their sonic specialty. But for "Hard Candy," Madge hooked up with name-brand guys like the Neptunes and Timbaland, and even brought on Justin Timberlake as a writing partner. What results is, expectedly, of-the-moment and radio-ready. "4 Minutes," with Timberlake, is already a top three Billboard Hot 100 hit, and harmonious ballad "Miles Away" might be some of her best work yet. But it feels familiar.
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