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I'm drunk, so you'll forgive me as I just go on a bit of rant about this album. I put in a bid for review and missed the lottery, so my words don't have any official merit. Just gonna blog witch'yall. I don't think that slang has a fancy format yet. Anyway, dude, "Pusher Lover Girl". Justin did that song at the Grammies, and from that moment on I was all "gimmie this album, gimmie give me gimmie this album." I didn't get the hate for "Suit & Tie"; I may never. I do agree with the now-infamous ?uest post ("if you gonna go 40.....go 40/40 with it"); if I felt like expanding to blog world, I'd have kept that nugget to myself. But it was public; mad will always me made.
How do I feel about Justin Timberlake? Let's rewind to 2001, 2002. Either "Girlfriend" or "Gone" is on Total Request Live (I called this Total Recall at first - fucking Colin Farrell), and if I'm not making out with the girl that's watching these shows then she's remarking intensely about how much Justin Timberlake stands out. Remember that this was a time when N*SYNC and Backstreet Boys were equally titanic, but something about N*SYNC's largess seemed more doomed to fail. Insiders felt JC Chasez was really in charge, women in for a shock that they were attracted to homos found solace in Lance Bass. Timberlake was for the wusses that didn't know better.
Luckily for perhaps everyone, Timberlake had the narrative. Britney Spears was his girl, perhaps and probably from as far back as the Mickey Mouse days. You're my generation and you have to care; you're the generation above, you're seeking reasons why. Releasing "Cry Me a River" as his solo debut solidified everything folks were afraid of: allow Timberlake control of his public identity, he might show some promise. Justified couldn't help but be the album we were all scared of at the height of boy band mania, the thing that proved at least one of these boy band de facto leaders was worth it.
The wild thing about growing up, that music helps to emphasize, is losing touch. At 24 I already feel an active struggle against it, desperate (and willing, and able) to enjoy new things because if I started falling back on nostalgia I'd feel a little incomplete. Maybe it's the way Justin's given himself to us in the decade since N*SYNC's dissolution, but I almost feel weird about him releasing an album now. I think this is what quite a few other writers are struggling with. Timberlake - and, perhaps to an even greater extent, Timbaland - feel like relics of a bygone era. I'm not sure what it is for them; for me, it's junior year of high school being the year of "My Love" and "What You Know" and middle school being defined by JT and Britney singles.
Just feeling like relics isn't the only cause for concern with 20/20 Experience, though. I'll laud both...at this point, all three of Justin's solo LPs at any opportunity, but none are without their faults. "Don't Hold the Wall" might pop up nearly 20 minutes into the LP proper, but truthfully it's just the third track and couldn't work much more efficiently as a momentum be -header if it tried. marsbars said it best (to stroke his ego, it's also partially why I backed away from submitting a black market review and hoping for the best): there are moments I'm unconvinced need to exist.
The difference is, they come in different spurts for me. "Don't Hold the Wall" is so worthless until it's second half kicks in, when it shifts from turgid late-70s disco jam to bonafied modern day shut the fuck up and dance anthem. But all that Timbaland-ing is a bit much, or obnoxious. It's not a bummer, but it's a bummer. Before I get to the real avalanches (aka: the pop culture controversies) let me talk about what I love. "Pusher Lover Girl" - studio, live or not, what criticisms can I take back to make you love me? "Strawberry Bubblegum", what do you ask of me? "Suit & Tie", what could I give you to remove a Jay-Z verse and beat I don't hate but have no particular opinion about?
And that's about it. For how interested I've been in this album, and listening to it, I have to admit that taken as a division of labor 20/20 Experience isn't the album your brain prepared you for. Very little of this album actually earns what it's asking for, and I don't really mean to take much away from Justin and Tim as I say that. This retro thing has been fetishized for a few years now and it's really no surprise that mainstream acts start to dig into what the scenes in L.A. and the midwestern underground are getting at, but due to rarity you hear a JT/TM collaboration is happening, sometimes you expect the next step.
That said, if this isn't a next step for pop "R&B" in any way it certainly paves the way for this generation's power artists to stop giving a fuck and indulge their favoritism. For example, I'll hate on "Chop Me Up" as long as I'm allowed but on some level I'll always appreciate a Memphis native putting such fucking idiots on his album just because they're arguably more important than he is to local tradition. Justin's been anything but an idiot musically since his segregation; picking and choosing battles.
Anyway, for all the melodic and musical things that I love about this album, if it weren't a huge pop release there'd be some factors I'd weigh more heavily on. For example, "Tunnel Vision" is a killer production but it's really, really stupid from a words point of view. So is "Mirrors". And these are two of the album's so-called definitive songs. Taking after the shifty transition between "Tunnel Vision"'s two parts (an easy criticism, were you a music/pop major, might be the subtle laziness of these "halves"), "Mirror" is equally a song that goes on forever merely because Justin Timberlake + Timbaland makes the song more interesting than Trey Songz + Cool & Dre. Both of these often-lauded songs (from what I've seen) are pretty fair otherwise.
In fact, lyricism is a problem all throughout the album. "Spaceship Coupe" is a song filled with words that sound good mainly because they're contained by the same verse or chorus; maybe I'd buy Justin's shot at Surrounded by Idiots/Princeism a little more if the words were better, but I already buy them quite a bit regardless. I'm just saying that song is a joke that happens to work. That whole giggling baby at the end of the track; where's Ginuwine?
What's probably hardest about 20/20 Experience is that it's ultimately very professional. Unlike when Justin was a scion of pop, he's now simply a filter. Timbaland too. Some people feel weird about that, and it's easy to. After all, the "throwback sound" has been down for a minute now (give or take six years) and this duo (trio, forgive me Jerome) can't help but be linked to that. 20/20 Experience is anything but an innovator's haven. Despite pretensions otherwise, 20/20 Experience is mostly the more solid but less zeitgeisty release it was always destined to be.
Possible this is the most satisfying product Timberlake has and will ever put his name on. Possible we'll never be able to accept it that way. Anyway, this turned out to be a drunken ramble that made sense. I was hoping for The Glow, Pt. 2 zaniness. I suppose this release just doesn't inspire that, so, one more 'gain: I really don't care for "Tunnel Vision" or "Mirrors" much at all. The latter sounds like a Mario song that missed the boat. I don't want to press any more keys. Perhaps I've already pressed more than enough.
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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." © Jay Bilas
"I don't read pages of rap lyrics, I listen to rap music." © Bombastic
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz
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