From out of seemingly nowhere, word broke onto the scene yesterday, announcing a new, upcoming album by: Justin Timberlake – one or two of you might have heard of this underground whirlwind. His first album in six years… wait, was “The 20/20 Experience” only six years ago? Oh, wow, it was 11 years ago, and in the meantime there was another album I have never heard of 🤷The announcement of the album that is bound to drop on March 15th, comes with a single by the name of “Selfish”, which (on first listen) is a decent, high-polish pop single that easily fits into the typical Top40 rotations – nothing particularly captivating.
However, this let a wave of nostalgia wash over me. Coming onto the scene with Justified back in 2002, I’ll admit that his music mostly reached me via radio rotations and my mom having the album in her car (later re-listens definitely brought another level of appreciation for it).
But when FutureSex/LoveSounds rolled around in 2006, “it hit different”, as the kids say. I recall sitting in my high school computer class, headphones plugged into an off-white/gray computer that must’ve dated back to the settlers’ early days. But the four tracks that had been released on Justin’s website prior to the album release, and that I had playing on repeat, indeed sounded like the future the album title was promising.
Timbaland’s production that would later reach levels of meme-dom for him just shouting random words in the background and building beats with/around them, was truly on point here. “SexyBack”, “What Comes Around Goes Around” and “Lovestoned / I Think She Knows” sounded and felt different. Sure, Usher’s “Yeah!” has meddled electronic beats with R&B two years prior, but the almost symphonic nature of the sounds on FS/LS, as opposed to the club energy of “Yeah!”, seemed to give it more gravitas.
All that is to say, give this banger a listen and reconfirm for yourself why this was such a smash-hit back in the day! 🙂
Coryphe 