Album review: Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 experience

Nobody loves a muse quite like Justin Timberlake. Most draw inspiration from muses. But Justin straight up sleeps with the music of his muses and crawls inside a bitch. Justified saw Justin playing the white born Michael Jackson. FutureSex/LoveSounds saw Justin stroking Prince's weave through a lavender curtain. And his third effort The 20/20 experience should be throwing a royalty check and platinum braid beads to Stevie Wonder. His aural influence on this album isn't as obvious as the aforementioned. But it's there. The shade slight irony that Justin went and named the album around vision when a n***a is blind. What Justin manages to do here though is throw a few of extra flavours into Stevie's pitcher of cool-aid by pulling from era's which jump between the 60s, 80s and late 90s. So essentially what we get here is an album which is pretty much what you would expect from Justin following on from Justified and FutureSex/LoveSounds. But again, this isn't immediately obvious. It just...is.

The 20/20 experience draws more on the soulful and organic sounds of Justified than the electro driven FutureSex/LoveSounds and is much more consistent for it. The conscious effort for Justin's album to be seen as avant garde is still there, it's just more organic in its approach. Although it comes at the risk of not featuring a song which is as instantly memorable and pop referential as "SexyBack", "My love" or "Summer love". And also comes at the risk of being his least memorable album as a whole.

Whilst The 20/20 experience is produced to near perfection and doesn't feature a single flat out terrible song, very few songs stick long after you've listened to them. There is no one song on this album which will reside within your subconscious and refuse to leave in the same way "Like I love you", "Cry me a river", "Rock your body" or "SexyBack" have done. In terms of musical integrity, the album is as solid as Justin's work has ever been. But in a sound-scape so focused on byte sized, easily tangible songs, The 20/20 experience's 8 minute track lengths, soft punching hooks may go over a lot of heads. This isn't to say the album isn't good. Aurually it's a treat which jumps around definable era's within music.

"Pusher love girl", "Suit & tie" and "That girl" are throwbacks to 60s Motown. "Suit & tie" ranks as one of the albums' worst offerings. But "Pusher love girl" is wonderfully soulful and serves up one of Timbaland's most stanky and richly produced soul cuts since Brandy's "Where is she 2 U". "That girl" feels like a watered down version of "Pusher love girl" to the point that I don't see the point in it. It's not a shit song - it just feels redundant when "Pusher love girl" is everything this song is in a bigger and better form.

The era of funk is visited for "Let the groove get in" - which sees Justin reach for Gloria Estefan's wig for the first 5 minutes of the song and then dance on Michael Jackson's for the last 2. It's nice to hear a song which embeds the hot blooded Latin / Havana pop style faithfully without putting an electro, bastardised spin on it; even if the song in the long run is wholly forgettable.

The seductiveness of the 80s comes through with "Strawberry bubblegum". If I were to describe this song in 2 words they'd be 'fucking magic'. Sharp drums, ethereal synths, smooth vocals and cluster of channel hopping Hey's make this song the smoothest on the album and rank it as near perfection. Even the awful lyrics aren't enough to detract from the magic of this song. And just when my inner 80's child is getting it in with the shuffle and the running man, the song switches into 3 minutes of what sounds like a lost interlude from Songs in the key of life. The power balladry of the 80's comes in the form of "Mirrors", which wreaks of "Cry me a river" and "What goes around (Comes around)" - but without the soul torn lyrics . It's overly sappy lyrically, but the production is nice. It should have closed the album and would have done so perfectly if it weren't for the Coldplay / Sigur Rós rip off "Blue ocean floor". Ethereally beautiful, but out of place and too consciously trying to prove a point.

Sounds of the 00s come through with "Don't hall the wall", bringing back the Arabian chants and Indian percussion which Timbaland was trotting out with regularity at the turn of the century on the cusp of the Desi boom. "Don't hold the wall" is Justin's 2013 equivalent of Justified's "Oh no (What you got)" in a much more slower and seductive form. The song speeds up towards the end ditching the Middle eastern vibes for a much more harder edged bounce which is a complete Ctrl + C job of Timbaland's mobile underground remix of Madonna's "4 minutes". "Tunnel vision" is throwback Timbo, as he hearkens back to his signature sound which made Ginuwine, Aaliyah, Missy Elliott and Timbaland himself an oft mentioned name within Hip-hop and R&B. Timbo was veering so far from his classic sound that a n***a couldn't see it in the rear view and baby girl was turning in her grave. So it's nice to know Timbaland remembers it, that he can still pull it off, whilst also showcasing that his classic sound is timeless and undefinable.

Timbaland's output between 2006 and 2012 has been an utter mess. Turning in productions which were far from exhibiting the genius we'd witnessed from the late 90's up until the release of FutureSex/LoveSounds. Whilst The 20/20 experience will restore faith in those who felt Timbaland had lost it, his work here is very safe, calculated and wholly self referential. You can hear a conscious effort was made to be overly careful and every Timbo trick and cliché is thrown into this album. It makes for solid and consistent set, but it's not fresh and it's far from new.

The 20/20 experience is a nice listen. But once you begin to strip away the sonics of Timbo and co., you realise that the lyrics to some of the songs aren't that great. In fact, they are flat out awful. The hooks and refrains are catchy enough. But the verses languish and feel as though Justin is just buying time with elementary rhymes until the chorus. The song topics begin to wane after so long because this entire album is essentially 9 tracks about falling in love and 2 about dancing. It's nice that Justin is so in love and is no longer singing out the emotional scars of his relationship with Britney, but at age 32 and having enjoyed the life of a successful boy band member, a pretty successful actor and now a married man, Justin should be saying a heck of a lot more than 'I love you. You are amazing. C'mon girl, let's dance'. The musical soundscape of each of these endeavours is varied save for the coupling of "Pusher love girl" and "That girl". But lyrically Justin is singing about the same thing with different metaphors. He likens love to a drug. He likens his better half to looking in a mirror. He likens sex to flying in a spaceship. He refers to pussy as bubble gum and his dick as a lollipop. He likens finding his perfect girl to shooting on a film set. The list sounds much more creative and varied when jotted down than it is when you are listening to the songs. This also isn't helped by the song lengths. FutureSex/LoveSounds saw Justin occasionally clock songs in at 7 to 8 minutes, but here he does the same on near enough every track. Where his predecessors 8 minute tracks were essentially 2 different songs musically, here every track is an extended mix with some outstaying their welcomes. On some songs you relish in the extended length and get sucked into the vibe. Where-as on others you become glaringly aware that the song should have ended 2 minutes ago and that n***a's were on that copy and paste. But its a pretty cool compromise for the (regular edition of the) album only featuring 10 songs.

The 20/20 experience on one hand feels as though it's trying to hard, whilst on the other hand feels as though it's not trying hard enough. The production is pin-pointed to perfection and Justin had a clear focus with this album. But that sense of spontaneity and freshness you got with Justified and FutureSex/LoveSounds just isn't here.

Still... Justin goes a long ways to prove that nothing he's done up to this point is a fluke and with a 15+ year career and 3 successful solo albums under his belt, he's already exceeded the career sell by date we'd stamped on him when he was rolling underneath shutters and running from dogs in "Bye bye bye".

*Throws a copy of The 20/20 experience at Usher* N***a, you should be ashamed of yo'self.

RATING: 6.5 / 10

Album highlights:
■ Pusher love girl
■ Don't hold the wall
■ Strawberry bubblegum ★ J's fave
■ Tunnel vision
■ Mirrors