OK, loyal opposition and/or voices in my head, I get it, and I’m not immune to it. By “it,” I mean Justin Timberlake’s incessant, wearying likability. If his SNL work weren’t enough (most people would push his Samberg co-creations ‘Dick in a Box’ and ‘Motherlover’ here, but I personally prefer his “-ville” series: Omeletville, Homelessville, Plasticville, Liquorville, and most recent Veganville, or the Single Ladies sketch), there’s his History of Rap collaboration with Jimmy Fallon. He is an obscenely effortless and talented live performer, and would be super cool to hang out with. Not an easy thing for me to say, as those of you who've read me voice my displeasure with him may recall.
So why do I continue to be annoyed by the ongoing swoonfest surrounding his re-emergence onto the music scene? Is it partially explained by jealousy? Probably. But at least some of it has to do with things like this article, which suggests that the reason for JT’s ‘Midas Touch’ is his authenticity – essentially, the idea that attaching the JT ‘brand’ to anything gives it integrity. (He then tells this ridiculous story about how JT flies his dad to Augusta to play golf, and seems to think that this underscores his authenticity. I suppose that would seem super authentic to a guy whose main job is hosting Access Hollywood.)
I hate this. As I said above, JT is crazy talented, and seems funny and genuinely like a nice guy. But I do not consider him – or more specifically, his return to music - authentic. Whether or not you agree with me somewhat depends on how you define that idea. I prefer the 5th definition in Merriam-Webster online: “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character” or even the 3rd: “not false or imitation.” I don’t feel that JT’s behavior reflects this quality, despite the fact that it’s clear that he wants us to think so. After all, that’s why he released that video in which he said, “I don’t think I can physically torture myself that much and expect it to fulfill me the way that it does. You just don’t get that every day. You have to wait for it.” By “it”, he means being inspired. He’s clearly trying to convince us that the reason for his prolonged hiatus is that he only makes music when he is truly inspired from his core. That raises 2 questions, to me.
First: should we be celebrating this mentality? I guess it depends. There are plenty examples of great artists who go through droughts in their productivity, but usually when we hear about them, we hear about prolonged struggles against writer’s block despite continuous attempts at making the next great thing. When artists suffer a gap in production, they usually aren’t producing anything, despite what usually seems to be herculean attempts to do so. During Justin Timberlake’s 7 year musical hiatus, he:
- co-wrote or appeared on Timbaland’s “Give it To Me,” 2 songs from Duran Duran’s 2007 album, 50 cent’s “Ayo Technology,” Madonna “4 Minutes,” T.I.’s “Dead and Gone,” Ciara’s “Love Sex Magic,” Leona Lewis’s “Don’t Let Me Down,” and Timbaland’s “Carry Out,” the last of which was in 2009.
- Appeared in “Southland Tales,” “Shrek the Third,” “The Love Guru,” “The Open Road,” “The Social Network,” “Yogi Bear,” “Bad Teacher,” “Friends with Benefits,” “In Time,” and “Trouble with the Curve.”
- Co-owns 2 restaurants, has his own brand of tequila, starts a clothing line, hosts SNL 5 times (as mentioned above), buys a golf course in his hometown, executive produces a truly awful MTV reality series, invests in MySpace and says “I don’t have anything on my plate other than thinktanking a lot of different ideas for MySpace,” backs a startup called Particle that is ultimately bought by Apple, and I’m sure, plenty of other stuff.
It seems a little difficult for me to digest, especially with JT’s release of “Suit and Tie” in January 2013. After years of internal struggle, he is struck with lyrics that he absolutely needs to tell the world: “Stop, let me get a good look at it/So thick, now I know why they call it a fatty.” S&T peaks at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is the first single from his upcoming album, The 20/20 Experience. The album can be streamed on ITunes and features 10 tracks, running a total of 70 minutes. Naturally, when an album is 7 years in the making, one would expect that he went back and forth over very detail relating to the album. A key question would be why he, a bona fide pop star, would choose to release an album where the songs averaged 7 minutes in duration. His response: “If Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin can do 10-minute songs and Queen can do 10-minute songs then why can't we?” His description of the album is that it “"goes in a lot of different directions. I think there’s probably a little bit of what was reminiscent on the first album and then a little bit of what’s reminiscent of the second album, and then some new stuff."
I’m sorry, but that is some dismissive shit. And I don’t buy for one second that while he was buying golf courses, making Tequila, and filming Friends with Benefits that behind it all he was dying to get back to making music. And his album seems to reflect that fact. It’s an album that he could easily make in his sleep. He’s a good singer, and a good melodist, and has always been an awful lyricist, and seems to pair well with Timbaland – so he just does all of that again. I don’t need to review the album because Steven Hyden from Grantland does such a pristine job at it – his line ‘He now seems like an actor dabbling in music rather than a musician dabbling in acting’ pretty much tells the whole story. The crux – this guy did not particularly care about making a great record.
And that is weird. I mean, JT is nothing if not driven (see – his crazy list of accomplishments above). And at some point he was driven musically as well – I mean, his first album is defensively titled Justified. So if he wasn’t motivated by making a great record, what was motivating him?
I think that Matthew Perpetua of Buzzfeed is spot-on here – he is trying to perpetuate the Justin Timberlake Brand. He’s not trying to make a great album – he is telling us that he is already a great artist, and therefore everything he makes is great. JT knows that selling records doesn’t make money; iconography does. So why not just skip the ‘great albums’ part and skip straight to the ‘living legend’ end? As Perpetua says so astutely: “Timberlake knows that his recordings are loss leaders, and his big money comes from endorsement deals, tours, and movie roles that trade on his image as the coolest, classiest guy around.”
This is EXACTLY why I think JT has consciously made an album of long songs that probably wont be chart toppers. He knows that album sales don’t make money anyways – and he’ll make plenty of money touring. This move allows him to carefully side-step the fact that a) his current reputation seems to exceed his musical content, and b) young people right now don’t care about Futuresex/Lovesounds – he’s been gone too long. He stands to lose credibility if he tries to make an album of chart-toppers and fails, but serves his brand well if he releases an album that’s designed to enhance his reputation more than his wallet. That’s why he didn’t pursue the current hottest artists to appear on his album (no Frank Ocean, no A$AP Rocky, no Kendrick Lamar) – he went Hip-Hop’s Godfather, Jay-Z.
And we have all fallen for this move. This is Spotify’s description of him: “Justin Timberlake may be the quintessential pop star of the new millennium, a star who jumped from platform to platform on his way to establishing himself as something bigger than a star: he was a self-sustained empire.” Jimmy Fallon isn’t hurting this either. In doing this, JT is following the model of Gwyneth Paltrow, who, after her career arc started to decline from the peak of Shakespeare in Love, started a “lifestyle newsletter,” GOOP, and now seems to be famous for existing.
I don’t subscribe to this model, and that’s why I love Kanye West.
Kanye West's Journey of Self-Improvement
As of late 2006, Kanye and JT had both released 2 albums – Kanye released College Dropout in 2004 and Late Registration in 2006. Kanye starts working on Graduation as soon as he releases Late Registration. He spends a great deal of time studying Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash to improve his storytelling ability. He consciously departs from his prior ‘chamber pop’ orchestration in favor of a more electronic soundscape, inspired by dubstep and electronic music popular in western Europe. Lyrically this album marks a stark deviation – for the first time Kanye becomes much more introspective – no doubt inspired by his studying of folk music as noted above. We see the first manifestations of Kanye’s struggle – between his desire for wealth and fame and his inner loneliness – on “Flashing Lights” and “Can’t Tell Me Nothing.” His track “Big Brother” is yet another example of Kanye using his music as therapy – he openly discusses both his admiration and anger towards Jay-Z, whom he accuses of stealing his idea for having Chris Martin perform on a track.
Graduation wins 4 Grammy awards and, depending on who you ask, is to this point his best and most ambitious album. He fails to win an award at 2007’s MTV VMAs and expresses his feelings about it afterwards. His mother dies in late 2007 after undergoing an elective abdominoplasty and breast reduction by a doctor who ignored her peri-operative risk stratification. In early 2008 his 18-month engagement with designer Alexis Phifer abruptly ends; he channels his pain into his 4th studio album, 808s & Heartbreaks, in which he radically alters his approach, heavily including AutoTune-based singing – it is widely believed that the reason for this is that Kanye felt that his emotions could not fully be expressed through rapping. His sense of isolation seems far more profound in the setting of the loss of his mother and relationship; he notes: “This album was therapeutic – its lonely at the top.” Not long after this album came out, the legendary South Park episode "Fishsticks" came out, parodying Kanye's "Heartless" from 8&H. Kanye's response to the episode is telling - here it is in its entirety:
SOUTH PARK MURDERED ME LAST NIGHT AND IT'S PRETTY FUNNY. IT HURTS MY FEELINGS BUT WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM SOUTH PARK! I ACTUALLY HAVE BEEN WORKING ON MY EGO THOUGH. HAVING THE CRAZY EGO IS PLAYED OUT AT THIS POINT IN MY LIFE AND CAREER. I USE TO USE IT TO BUILD UP MY ESTEEM WHEN NOBODY BELIEVED IN ME. NOW THAT PEOPLE DO BELIEVE AND SUPPORT MY MUSIC AND PRODUCTS THE BEST RESPONSE IS THANK YOU INSTEAD OF "I TOLD YOU SO!!!" IT'S COOL TO TALK SHIT WHEN YOU'RE RAPPING BUT NOT IN REAL LIFE. WHEN YOU MEET LITTLE WAYNE IN PERSON HE'S THE NICEST GUY FOR EXAMPLE. I JUST WANNA BE A DOPER PERSON WHICH STARTS WITH ME NOT ALWAYS TELLING PEOPLE HOW DOPE I THINK I AM. I NEED TO JUST GET PAST MYSELF. DROP THE BRAVADO AND JUST MAKE DOPE PRODUCT. EVERYTHING IS NOT THAT SERIOUS. AS LONG AS PEOPLE THINK I ACT LIKE A BITCH THIS TYPE OF SHIT WILL HAPPEN TO ME. I GOT A LONG ROAD AHEAD OF ME TO MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE I'M NOT ACTUALLY A HUGE DOUCHE BUT I'M UP FOR THE CHALLENGE. I'M SURE THE WRITERS AT SOUTH PARK ARE REALLY NICE PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE.
One of the amazing tracks released for free on GOOD Fridays is a remix of Power featuring Jay-Z; this is thought to be the jumping off point for the recording of the Kanye/Jay-Z collaboration Watch The Throne, released a year later in 2011. The album is a meditation on wealth and grandiosity in all the ways that Justin Timberlake isn’t; as every line filled with swagger is matched by commentary on the relationship of black American men to wealth and power (see: Murder to Excellence) and Kanye’s continued obsession with the hollowness of celebrity (see: New Day). Claire Suddath of Time summarizes that Jay and Kanye’s “celebration of the finer things in life” as trumped by “what it means to be successful and black in a nation that still thinks of them as second class.” The album also serves as the coming out party for Frank Ocean, and has the added benefit of causing Gwyneth Paltrow to tweet the N-word, thus awesomely justifying everyone's hatred of her. The album is well received but often derided for its celebration of wealth and grandeur, a criticism that I suspect JT will somehow avoid, despite being openly sponsored by Tom Ford.
West follows THAT album with a collaborative album off his GOOD Music label titled Cruel Summer. While the album receives lukewarm reviews, it has at least 4 unequivocally awesome songs: “To the World,” “Clique,” “Mercy,” and “Cold” (formerly "Theraflu", who declined affiliation - lame).
Unlike JT, Kanye’s extra-music interest are minimal. He has opened a few Fatburger restaurants in Chicago and a quite poorly reviewed women’s fashion label, DW Kanye West. But his main focus has unequivocally been music, as evidenced by the fact that during JT's hiatus, he releases 5 (5!!!) critically acclaimed albums and is currently at work on his next one. He takes anything related to music as a personal affront, even if it doesn’t involve him (see – his outburst over Taylor Swift winning a VMA that Beyonce should have). He’s so jealous about Jay-Z appearing on a song with Timberlake that he feels the need to start a small feud about it. He is ranked number 7 on MTV’s annual “Hottest MCs in the Game” list (whatever that is) and immediately calls into Hot 97, trying to be cool about it, immediately becoming derailed and yelling, “They don’t like Givenchy Kanye. They don’t like Kanye in a kilt. They don’t like Kanye in a relationship.” About an MTV list that takes into account Facebook votes. That’s how much he cares about everything relating to music.
Our response is to vilify him for this, but that’s not my response. Give me someone who cares so much about every element of what he does that he seems like a borderline insane person, but at the same time who is continually telling himself to DROP THE BRAVADO AND JUST MAKE DOPE PRODUCT, over the guy who is effortlessly doing an OK job at 6 different things while seeming more concerned with our perception of him than with the quality of what he produces. You can have the Jack (or Justin - Ha!) of all trades; I'll take the Master of one. But that’s a judgment call, and we can agree to disagree about that.
What I can’t agree to disagree about is JT equating his musical stature with someone like Kanye’s. Give it up, JT. Stop coming back after 7 years and pretending you're Frank Sinatra and releasing videos about the agony and ecstasy of your musical struggle. Just tell the truth, which is, “I’m awesome at a lot of stuff, and I do whatever is most convenient at the time so that I can remain as famous as possible.” You won’t ever be Kanye, and you won’t ever be Daniel Day-Lewis, and you'll certainly never be Michael Jackson. And that disappoints me, but at least then, I would buy that you are authentic. And either feud with Kanye, or don't. Don't say a throwaway line in front of a huge audience on SNL so that you can look like a badass, then backtrack days later on Jimmy Fallon because you know that Kanye could eviscerate you if he wanted.
Meanwhile, I have to wonder what it is about all of us that makes us want so badly for Justin Timberlake to be our musical savior. At first I thought it was because JT is a white male star, and we really miss the days of Elvis. But we seem totally comfortable with Beyonce being his female counterpart (another 'legend in her own time' whom everyone seems to forget has only released 2 genuinely good albums). So I'm still not sure, but I think that when we look at cultural icons, we still want to enshrine people that we would love to have over our house for dinner. JT, with his charisma and sense of humor and perfect voice, fits that bill. Kanye, with his neuroses and pride over having sex with porn stars and wearing Givenchy kilts and straitjackets, doesn't.
Questions?
So what if JT doesn’t want to be a cultural icon? It didn’t go so well for Michael Jackson. You just seem jealous.
It’s a good point, and one that I’ve wondered about, especially because I recently wondered, like many people, about the seemingly irrational hatred of Anne Hathaway. This has been quite well documented, especially by Ann Friedman at NY Magazine. Hathaway seems to annoy people because she chooses her acting roles carefully and seemed to pick her recent role in Les Miz specifically because it would offer her a chance to win an Academy Award. She seems altogether too calculated – and therefore unrelatable – while Jennifer Lawrence seems totally spontaneous – and therefore completely relatable. We feel this way despite the fact that in reality, J-Law’s ‘spontaneity’ is also almost certainly calculated. Ultimately, this seems to reveal the fact that what society seems to hate is not necessarily ambition, but naked ambition. We seem to hate when celebrities succeed and it is obvious that they were trying to do so. And my only explanation for this is that we prefer to think that celebrity is something that one cannot work to achieve – you just have to stumble into it. When we see J-Law tripping on the red carpet, we think, “Wow, this goofy girl gets an Oscar! That’s great (and so random and implausible that I couldn’t possibly envy it).” When Anne Hathaway wins and the narrative is that she chose a series of roles carefully to get to this point, we think, “She’s unlikeable (because her success is not random).”
Anne Hathaway, and Kanye, are unapologetically, directly ambitious – people find this grating and unlikeable. Jennifer Lawrence is apologetically ambitious – we find this charming and relatable. Justin Timberlake is kind of unapologetically unambitious (at least in terms of his craft) – we love this the most; he’s so talented that we couldn’t possibly be like him, and his lack of ambition further separates him from us, which we love. We assume that he is unambitious because his talent makes ambition unnecessary.
I guess those aren’t unreasonable ways to read these people. But I don’t feel that way. I love Hathaway and Kanye’s ambitiousness, and I find the fact that they don’t feel the need to hide it both refreshing and authentic. I think that Jennifer Lawrence’s sheepishness about her ambition to be fine, because I think its appropriate to find all of that weird at 22. But if she keeps it up for a few years, its going to get tired. And JT – I just wish he would pick one area – music or film – I wish it were music – commit, and try to reach his ceiling. But that's just me.
Why are you even comparing Kanye and JT? They have nothing to do with each other.
While that’s not an unreasonable question, I beg to differ. IMHO, JT and Kanye are the only (male) artists currently still in their prime who have the talent and potential longevity to ascend to the transcendent stature that Michael Jackson and Madonna occupied in the 80s. (While I wouldn’t count out Lady Gaga’s ambitions, I think Beyonce has the lead here in the female version of this race, though by all measurable accounts, it should belong to Britney, whom the RIAA and I would tell you has obliterated all competition.) That’s probably a big part of the reason that Jay-Z, whose only currency appears to be commercial stature, is drawn to them both, making an album with Kanye and touring with JT this summer. And this might be biased, but I think we can look at Jay-Z as the sounding board for how we define both Kanye or JT. Look no further than Hova’s incredibly lazy thoughts on S&T: “This is truffle season/Tom Ford tuxedos for no reason” versus his astute observations on Murder to Excellence: “Now please, domino, domino/Only spot a few blacks the higher I go/I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go.” And its easy to see why that’s the case; on one end we have Kanye saying “In the past if you picture events like a black tie/What’s the last thing you expect to see – black guys/What’s the life expectancy for black guys/The system’s working effectively – that’s why” while JT is crooning “Going hot so hot, just like an oven/And ‘ow’ burn myself, but just had to touch it.” I want the person whom we install as the representative for pop culture during our time to have been someone who gave enough of a shit to question his adulation as he pushed himself achieve new heights. What annoys me is that this could easily be an epic competition between 2 incredible, but very different artists, with MJ’s throne at stake. And I guess it still is, but it kind of seems lame when one of them isn’t playing, or worse, phoning it in.
