4 All the Sistas Around da World

As tempting as it is to mythologize the Timbaland/Missy Elliott creative partnership as an instant worldbeating burst of avant-garde innovation, there was a time when they were merely up-and-coming practitioners of an already-popular sound. Sista, a group featuring Missy alongside fellow hip-hop singers LeShawn Shellmann, Chonita Coleman, and Radiah Scott, notched a little buzz with 1994 Elektra single “Brand New,” a woozy slow jam that was as rich on smooth vocal harmonies as it was off-kilter with loping, herky-jerky production. But it stalled at 84 on the R&B charts and scared Elektra off the prospect of putting out the album proper, so aside from some apocryphal circa-’94 German pressings, 4 All the Sistas Around da World only reached ears listening in hindsight more than twenty years later. If that makes it seem more like a historical exercise in tracking artistic evolution than a straight-up solid period-piece listen, don’t worry: this came from the DeVante Swing camp right in the midst of peak Jodeci, so the curious nature of hearing Missy before she stopped playing by the rules and Timbaland working on prototypes of himself is offset by their strong mid-’90s R&B chops and a hip-hop-rooted sound that plays to both coasts’ boom-bap/g-funk strengths.