The Cookbook is the sixth studio album by American rapper Missy Elliott, released on July 4, 2005, by The Goldmind Inc. and Atlantic Records in Germany and the United Kingdom, and on July 5 in the United States and Japan. To date, it is her final long play studio effort.
Three singles were released from the album; the first, "Lose Control", was released on May 23, 2005, and peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and charted well internationally. The second single, "Teary Eyed", was released on September 12, 2005, and failed to chart on any Billboard chart and charted low in other countries. The third single, "We Run This", was released on March 20, 2006, and peaked at number forty-eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and charted moderately well internationally.
The album received generally favorable reviews from critics. The album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart. The album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It received a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album, ultimately losing to Kanye West's Late Registration. The music video for "Lose Control", directed by Dave Meyers won the Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video.
Background
The title The Cookbook derived of Elliott feeling "no two records are going to sound alike; each record has its own spices and herbs. Each record is cooking up a hot recipe for a hot album." The black and white cover features Elliott posing with a vintage microphone in a 1920s juke joint. She explained the cover, saying, "I wanted people to see I was taking music back to the roots—not just hip hop, but our ancestors. Whether they was on railroad tracks or cooking in somebody's kitchen, they was always singing."
Recording
In January 2005, it was revealed Elliott had been working on a new album. Two months later, Ciara confirmed she would appear on the album, singing and rapping on the potential first untitled single at the time. Elliott worked on The Cookbook with such producers as the Neptunes, Rich Harrison and Scott Storch. The album included only two songs produced by Timbaland, who produced most or all songs on Elliott's previous albums. She explained, "Me and Tim, this like our sixth album, so if we go any further left, we gonna be on Mars somewhere. We've done everything it is to do. I think both of us came to a spot where we didn't know where to go with each other." and peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, number six on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and number two on the Billboard Pop 100. The single also peaked at number two on the New Zealand RIANZ Singles Chart and in the top ten in four other countries. A Dave Meyers-directed promotional video accompanied the song; it was the most played video on BET and MTV2 and second most played video in the United States. It went on to win a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video, while the song itself received a nomination for Best Rap Song.
The second single, "Teary Eyed", was released on September 12, 2005; it failed to chart except in Australia and Switzerland. The music video for the song was directed by Antti J. Jokinen and was filmed "like a movie". It features Elliott responding to a relationship that had gone wrong.
The third single, "We Run This", was released on March 20, 2006, and peaked at number 48 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 39 on the Billboard Pop 100 and peaked in the top forty in Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom. An edited version of the song was used as the theme song for the gymnastics-themed film Stick It, as well as for the music video, which was directed by Dave Meyers. The video features a cameo by gold-medalist Dominique Dawes as Elliott's gymnastics coach, with scenes from the film being used throughout the video. The song received a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Solo Performance.
Critical reception
The Cookbook received positive reviews from most music critics. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote, "The Cookbook is a convincing return to form.... Sounding as unique and startling and formidable as ever, Missy Elliott is clearly not a woman to be messed with." Los Angeles Times writer Natalie Nichols found that "her souffle of hip-hop, soul, R&B, funk and dance music falls a bit flat".
Pitchforks Ryan Dombal found the album "Even more bipolar than usual", with Elliott "jolting from uber-hypeness to soul-crushing balladry. Fortunately, supported by an array of producers both grizzly and green, her invaluable unpredictability is alternately harnessed and given new life on this album, despite its uneven and transitional nature." In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau gave The Cookbook an A− rating, Christgau called it a "benchmark album" and commented that "Elliott showcases the musical health of African American pop [...] Elliott's disinclination to give it up to gangsta's thrill cult or black pop's soft-focus porn, plus her proven ability to work a good beat when she gets one, leads her naturally to a collection that ebbs and flows, peaks and dips, and pokes fun at any canon of taste you got". In its second week, the album dropped to number seven on the chart, selling an additional 65,000 copies. On September 15, 2005, the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over 500,000 copies in the United States. On January 22, 2022, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over 1,000,000 copies in the United States. As of December 2015, the album has sold 657,000 copies in the US. The Cookbook peaked in the top thirty in Australia, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.
Track listing
Notes
- <sup></sup> signifies a co-producer
Sample credits
- "Partytime" contains a sample from "Whammer Jammer" by the J. Geils Band
- "Irresistible Delicious" contains a sample from "Lick the Balls" by Slick Rick and "Body Work" by Hot Streak
- "My Struggles" contains a sample from "What's the 411?" by Mary J. Blige
- "We Run This" contains a sample from "Apache" by the Sugarhill Gang
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! scope="row"|Canadian Albums (Nielsen SoundScan)
|18
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!scope="row"| European Top 100 Albums (Billboard)
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!scope="row"|Japanese Albums (Oricon)
|align="center"|16
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! scope="row"|Taiwanese Albums (Five Music)
| 5
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Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
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! scope="col"| Chart (2005)
! scope="col"| Position
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! scope="row"| US Billboard 200
| style="text-align:center;"|120
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! scope="row"| US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums (Billboard)
| style="text-align:center;"|44
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Certifications
Release history
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
|+ List of release dates, showing region, formats, and label
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! scope="col"| Region
! scope="col"| Date
! scope="col"| Format(s)
! scope="col"| Label
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! scope="row" | Germany
|rowspan="2"|July 4, 2005
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| rowspan="5" |
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! scope="row" | United Kingdom
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! scope="row" | France
|rowspan="3"|July 5, 2005
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! scope="row" | Japan
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! scope="row" | United States
|}