If Supa Dupa Fly was enough to stoke curiosity in listeners over the beatmaker behind the headliner, Timbaland and Magoo’s first album, following hot on its heels, might not have been enough to make them forget how singular Missy was on the mic. (Tim’s serviceable if almost defiantly basic in how laidback and flow-over-lyrics his style is; Magoo’s voice is basically “what if Q-Tip was 25% more nasal, way more stiff, and given to punchlines that were needlessly crass even during the Peak Edgelord late ’90s?”) But as a portfolio for a braintrust giddy with promise, loaded with ideas, and in tight with a lot of cool friends, Welcome to Our World is the kind of invitation worth taking just because it proves you can be unpretentious without actually being unambitious. Maybe that’s thanks to their long-term alliances (Missy hilariously vulgar on “Up Jumps Da’ Boogie”; Aaliyah starting to hit her grown-folks stride as a deep-soul visionary on “Man Undercover”). It could also be Tim’s by-this-point second-nature ability to make even the simplest hooks into catalysts for rhythmic complexity — yes, even the Knight Rider theme on “Clock Strikes (Remix)”; check the snares on that one. But as much as the headliners can careen from accessibly unspectacular to just plain dumb on the mic, they always pull off just enough panache to justify it. For all Timbaland & Magoo’s relative shortcomings in that department, it helps that there’s still the more-than-occasional moment of actual OK that shit was goofy but I laughed punchline raps. When Tim declares on “Peepin’ My Style” that “I can make you dance, and shake your butt, and wiggle/When it’s hot outside I eat popsicles,” you might not put him on Nas’s level, but hey, Nice & Smooth would be proud.