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Let’s be fair with Chris Cornell’s “Scream.” Is it an album for his core group of fans? No. About half of those fans hate this album or are going to hate this album. The reasoning for that is because it’s drastically different from anything he’s done in the past. It’s not like he gradually went into this style of music- he jumped into it. And a transition like that is going to be a tough transition for ANYBODY to make. That’s why this has been greeted with some hostility but when you listen through the album you’re presented with a ton of different thoughts. The first is how these songs could have been presented to make everybody happy. Keep the Timbaland produced tracks, but double-disc the set with acoustic/traditional versions of these Cornell songs. This is because as this production takes away what we all love about our type of music; the heart. The same beat 19 times in a row behind ‘That Bitch Ain’t a Part of Me’ has no heart, but songs like “Never Far Away” do have heart and you can’t hear that with the Timbaland produced tracks. An acoustic/traditional disc bundled with this disc would have remedied that and might have even caught some props for Cornell. Another thought with this record is the role of the producer on an album. Timbaland is immensely talented, more talented than most people could dream of being. The transitions on these albums are seamless and flawless and there’s no doubt for this type of an album it sounds better than anybody else could have done it. But the question with the producer remains the same; Should the producer only leave a thumbprint on the album so it’s more about the artist or should the producer dominate the album so much so that it doesn’t even sound like the artist? The answer to that question is pretty obvious. Cornell instigated this collaboration. True. But when the music is more about who produced the album than who performed it, then there’s not a lot of merit to it. Cornell gets points for having the guts to attempt this but he doesn’t gain enough to make up for the fact that he didn’t pull it off.