I am not afraid to admit that I am a fan of Justin Timberlake. Have been for quite a few years and if I could change lives with one man it would be him. If you have to ask why, you don't deserve to know. I thought his first solo album was a very good polished pop album with a bit of an R&B edge to it and it had a perfectly creepy stalker type song called "cry me a river" and now it is time for JT to release another solo effort and while he doesn't have that "cry me a river" type smash hit on it, is it worth the time?
The disc opens with the title track and it has the seemingly familiar "another one bites the dust" baseline but it is molded around Timbaland type sounds. SO it sounds like it would be the child of "Another one bites the dust" and Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" The vocals are a bit distorted to give them that computer type sound, which is fine for the first few songs but after a little while it does start to get a bit annoying. The first 5 songs are all pretty uptempo and feature very futuristic sounds with Timbaland's fingerprints all over them. Usually I am not the biggest fan of an entire rap or R&B album being mostly produced by the same guy because at times all of the songs can run together and JT does kind of run that risk with this CD. At some point that futuristic sound starts to feel less and less futuristic because you just heard bits of it on the song before.
The standout track for me is "What goes around, comes around" because even though it runs over 6 minutes long, the music changes as the mood of the song changes and at about the 5 minute mark the song gets darker as the story he tells unfolds in a not happy way. Justin seems to have perfected his falsetto for this CD as well, as it comes across much more clearly than ever before. He also proves that crunk music is so basic that even a former boy bander can make that entire kind of music sound good as he in joined by Oscar winners(can you believe it) 3-6-Mafia on Chop me up. Another really great track is the Will-I-Am produced "Damn Girl", well its a great song until Will tries to bring his horrid brand of rap to the track.
This album may not be ground breaking or earth shattering stuff, but for a pop artist it is pretty forward thinking and Justin remains an artist willing to take risks with his fanbase and unafraid to allow the people creating the music to be creative. I know it sounds very foolish to say that, but look at the current state of pop music-cheesy guitar playing boy songs, actresses pretending to sing and bland pianists. Justin is heads and shoulders above them all.
No comments:
Post a Comment