From looking at this album, it looks like Al is steering more towards original songs and away from parodies. This is a good decision, because it doesn't take that much talent to make a parody, and the originals, on this album at least, are better.
It doesn't take that much talent to make a BAD parody; a good one looks easy, but isn't.
The originals on this album
are really good (I could wish he'd left that "dip" line out of P@TLC, but you can't please everyone) and I wonder whether they benefited from that long delay between albums. While Jay Levey (presumably) and a few lawyers (presumably) were duking it out over Al's next contract, he could tweak and polish and perfect the originals to his musician's-heart's content.
Actually, I wonder about the effect of that on the parodies too. I know they were all recorded this year, but OTASH and eBay could both have been written (or at least begun) earlier-- both the original songs and the parody themes have been around for a while. I'm not complaining about lack of timeliness, mind you-- I really like both those songs-- but I wonder anyway.