Under Construction

The fourth album came out in November 2002 on The Goldmind Inc. and Elektra. Timbaland produced most of it, with additional production from Craig Brockman, Nisan Stewart, Errol "Poppi" McCalla and Elliott herself. She and Timbaland aimed for an old school sound and used old school rap and funk samples, among them Run-DMC's Peter Piper and Frankie Smith's Double Dutch Bus. Method Man guests on Bring the Pain, Ludacris on Gossip Folks, Jay-Z on Back in the Day, Ms. Jade on Funky Fresh Dressed, Beyonce on Nothing Out There for Me and TLC on Can You Hear Me. Elliott dedicated the album to Aaliyah and to the victims of the September 11 attacks.

The singles were Work It, released on 16 September 2002, and Gossip Folks, released on 9 December. A third, Back in the Day with Jay-Z, was scrapped, and a Pussycat remix with Janet Jackson and Lil' Kim was dropped because the label thought it too explicit. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 with 259,000 copies, spent 36 weeks on the chart and was certified double platinum on 14 July 2003. It was nominated for Best Rap Album and Album of the Year at the Grammys, and it appears in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Pitchfork's 2002 review called it a good record with some incredibly sick production work, and singled out Funky Fresh Dressed, where Timbaland flips the track with a reverse loop from the Beastie Boys' Paul Revere. Rolling Stone's Gavin Edwards wrote that it was uninhibited and unpredictable and her best yet. The New York Times' Jon Pareles wrote that, despite some charming stretches, the old-school sound wears thin over the course of an album. The Guardian called it a stone-cold classic, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner said he and Karen O listened to it all the time and played it before going onstage.