on first listen, i feel timbaland is doing a pretty good job at capturing certain timbres and aesthetics across his career, even honing in on the right periods, while also uplifting it a little bit with a dubstep and modern pop twist. the initial demoes are also released for purists. could we expect anything more from the tracks? we couldn't, really. it's not new material, so the question "would michael work with timbaland in the early 2010s" is sort of meaningless.
i always preferred michael either in race shattering punk rock mode or in social justice fuck the fuckers mode, and this is low on either of those aspects in favour of love songs. that's a reflection of the material, of course.
further, you can tell that a lot of these are outtakes because the tracks tend to repeat aimlessly after the midway point. when it's not clear they aren't fully written, it's mostly clear they were abandoned...
high points: "a place with no name", "do you know where your children are", "xscape".
