Friday September 22, 2006

In sync with Timbaland, Justin moves closer to club R&B

By John J. Moser

Justin Timberlake swears that when he first sang the line "I'm bringing sexy back," he didn't know it would become the pop-music catch phrase of the year.

But with the release of "SexyBack," the invasive earworm of a song that carries those lyrics, there was no looking back.

"It was the first line that I came up with on the song," Timberlake says during a telephone news conference. "Originally I wasn't even planning on calling the song `SexyBack.' I was going to call it, you know, something like ... I don't know what we were going to call it.

"(But) I definitely didn't think it would become the most worn-out joke of 2006. It just sounded like a nice opening to the song. I mean, I definitely didn't know it was going to start what it started."

The rest of Timberlake's new CD, FutureSex/LoveSounds (Jive), was released last week, and it's clear Timberlake has started something.

The album's 12 beat-heavy, hook-filled songs made it a shoo-in to be No. 1 on this week's Billboard album chart. And though last month's short preview tour of smaller venues sold out in minutes, Timberlake was cautious last week against expectations of a massive hit. After all, his solo debut, 2002's double Grammy Award-winning Justified, sold three million copies but peaked at No. 2.

Topping the charts is nothing new for Timberlake, who with `N Sync, the 1990s boy band that made him famous, sold 30 million albums - including 1.1 million in the first day and 2.4 million in the first week for 2000's "No Strings Attached."

But Timberlake says personal artistic growth was his real goal with FutureSex/LoveSounds, which clearly continues Timberlake's journey away from `N Sync and moves him closer to R&B stars such as Usher.

He says that when he hooked up with hot hip-hop producer Timbaland, his instructions were that he wanted something different from Justified.

"When we first met, I said to him, `This has to sound like nothing that we've ever heard before. We have to find a niche in the studio that says, OK, not only are the songs equally as good as the ones on Justified, but it has to sort of grab people by the collar as far as the production and the sound,'" Timberlake says.

He thinks they succeeded. "(Timbaland) is so innovative, I think, that he took to that challenge very well, and he definitely wasn't intimidated by it. Even these songs in their rough form, they sounded ... I don't want to say a new sound, but just something that sounded fresh."

Not new, indeed. Timberlake acknowledges FutureSex/LoveSounds borrows heavily from 1980s-era Prince.

"Prince to me is the ultimate artist," he says. "It's like the biggest understatement to say that someone like Prince influences someone like me, who grew up listening to all of his work. ... The thing that I love about Prince is he really makes his own rules and I think that in creating something like music, you really shouldn't have any rules."

Timberlake says he didn't consciously adopt Prince's styles, but "there were a couple of songs that we would finish up and Timbaland and I would say, `Oh, this reminds me of this,' or `This reminds me of this.' And coincidentally a lot of the songs were Prince cuts."

Timberlake also tapped into The Artist's obsession with sex, but that, too, was unconscious, he says.

"We kind of just created," he says. "I mean, the lyrics and the melodies came off of the tracks that we were working on. ... You know, after creating all the music, I definitely felt it was appropriate to have (sex) in the title."

But the focus on sex is clearly part of an effort by Timberlake, 25, to be seen as a more adult entertainer. The album also carries a parental warning. At his club show last month at Philadelphia's Electric Factory, which was for people 18 and older, he drank beer on stage and made sexual gestures. And the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine talks about him smoking marijuana in Amsterdam.

It was an earlier effort at a more mature profile that got Timberlake in trouble when he tore away Janet Jackson's bra at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show to reveal her breast, causing a media furor and flurry of calls for censorship. Timberlake at the time infamously labeled it a "wardrobe malfunction," but when asked last week on The Late Show with David Letterman whether it was planned, he simply said it was "not a well-thought-out performance."

The more adult Timberlake also has made a foray into movies, although his debut, the action thriller Edison Force with Morgan Freeman, went straight to video.

"I'm not disappointed," he says. "I feel fortunate to work with such amazing actors, and really an ambitious director. I learned a lot from it. ... I learned from osmosis. Just being around Morgan Freeman was like Acting 101."

He has three other movies - Alpha Dog, Black Snake Moon with Samuel L. Jackson and a voice role in Shrek the Third - all due next year. But he says his aspirations "definitely don't lie in Hollywood."

"God knows I have enough - I don't need any more famous friends," he says, referring to his tabloid-mill romance with actress Cameron Diaz. "I don't have any aspirations to sort of be a movie star. I just really wanted the experience of doing some genuine acting in film.

"I think at the end of the day you can just kind of do what inspires you. ... As far as being an actor, I'll continue ... if I'm lucky enough to have the opportunity."

For now, Timberlake says he expects to start a tour for FutureSex/LoveSounds with a North American leg in January. "I don't want to say too much about it, but it's going to be an amazing show," he says. "Me and my manager are just getting together who we're going to take out with us on tour, so we're not really sure yet. ... But the creative ideas that I've come up with, I think it's going to be an amazing show, definitely. The trick for me is to find a way to bring the vibe that we've created, myself and my band, with the club show to an arena."

Asked whether he'd ever sing `N Sync songs or perform with its members again, Timberlake hedges - "That's tough to say." But he leaves the clear impression it's behind him.

He says he has written and produced songs for fellow `N Sync vocalist J.C. Chasez's next solo album and that he's "extremely proud" of them. "I felt like we found a sound for him in working together, probably because I just know him so well. I've known him half of my life."

But Timberlake says he does not foresee a Backstreet Boys-type reunion "in the near future, until we can find out what would work for us. Because I think what we did doesn't work anymore. ... I think it's kind of hard to make something work that was kind of a moment in time, especially when you're all such different people now."

(Timberlake doesn't address it, but one member of `N Sync certainly is different. Lance Bass announced in People Magazine in July that he is gay.)

Timberlake takes the blame for `N Sync dissolving. He notes he was the youngest member, just 14, when `N Sync signed a record deal, "and I think as I started to learn more about music, not just the business, I think that I decided I wanted to do something that really met my creative urge and this was the venue for me.

"And I knew that it wouldn't work any other way. ... I think there was just kind of something inside me that said if you don't do this now, you might never do it."

So now he's bringing sexy back. Asked just what he was bringing sexy back from, Timberlake laughs.

"I think sexy just sort of changes," he says. "It's interesting because everybody's got a different idea of what sexy is. But I don't think sexy ever left. Like I said, when I was first writing the song I didn't know the phrase was going to become such a humongous phrase for popular culture. What I thought was, we were bringing fun back, you know, to music.

"That's what I feel translates. And so if that's what bringing sexy back is, then so be it. But I know that we had so much fun making the record, it's kind of hard to not feel that when you listen to it."

eCentral

Friday September 22, 2006

In sync with Timbaland, Justin moves closer to club R&B

By John J. Moser