2002: Justified, Justin Timberlake

BY Nicholas Russell

I can smell my uncles’ cologne when I listen to Justified. Variously, one who used to pick me up from school when my parents still worked into the evenings; we’d stop by Burger King in his Honda and he’d bump “Rock Your Body”, along with NSYNC’s greatest hits. Another, who preferred all the sonic and historical antecedents to Justified that contributed to his enjoyment of the album: Missy Elliott, Michael Jackson, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Donny Hathaway. Even now, I can’t describe that smell accurately, though it belongs to the vague category of “clean car men’s cologne aftershave” that seemingly all uncles of a certain age use at one time or another. I’ve since subconsciously grafted that smell onto Timberlake himself, whom I’ve never met, but whose image instills an immediate, reptilian fondness in me the way only family and infant celebrity obsession can. 

So extricating Justin Timberlake from my childhood is impossible, meaning that, for a very long time, it was difficult for me to think critically about his first two albums. Not in the sense that I should have been looking for flaws or reasons to dislike them, him, the legacy and controversies, that vaunted trajectory that’s since slumped when it comes to who Timberlake is as an artist now. Forget the Justin who sold out, Trolls Justin, Man of the Woods, that viral video of him at the Something In the Water festival dancing for his life. Rather, it’s often the case that when I come back to the foundational pieces of music I grew up with, they present themselves whole and untouched, as these utterly purpose-built and crystalline forms that simply came into being. Especially as a child in the early aughts, so much of the work of making music seemed hidden from view. And if it was played by my uncles or my mom, all the more reason to simply believe it had been ensconced as unimpeachable, a fact as opposed to a triumphant experiment. 

If we’re talking about a reputation as something given willingly, we’d have to pick a different artist, a different album, a different time. There’s nothing easy about Justified, even now, across thirteen tracks, the distillation of a crash course in course correction. Justified has “striver” written all over it. NSYNC’s unceremonious hiatus-turned-end –after three smash hit records (I’m not including the Christmas album), a generous handful of era-defining singles, and a rivalry with the Backstreet Boys that only bolstered both groups’ fame– came about like dinner plans cancelled at the last second. Ever since their work on the late-stage NSYNC single “Girlfriend”, The Neptunes and Timberlake unwittingly constructed a creative bridge that would lead them toward a commercially successful and medium-spanning future. 

This future eventually encompassed film and television, so often the marker of “crossover success”, though the real thing at stake wasn’t merely Timberlake’s viability as a solo act, but, at least in the contemporary framing, his believability as a white kid singing R&B. Without antiseptic entreaties to love or the industrial churn of corporate image-making endemic to boy bands, Timberlake sought to re-enter the spotlight as a standalone sexually mature figure who could boast legitimate genre cred. To that end, Justified’s production credits feature the likes of Brian McKnight, Clipse, Timbaland, The Underdogs Janet Jackson, alongside the record’s true captains, the wunderkind Neptunes duo Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo. Obviously, the results paid off. As ubiquitous as the singles from FutureSex/LoveSounds are, I have never seen as intense a joyful reaction from strangers as when “Senorita” or “Like I Love You” comes on. In this way, Timberlake’s entire career is built off the back of Justified, the lodestar for solo success, that melded all of the artist’s most distinctive skills (dancing, singing, stage presence) with his most shrewd (relentless self-promotion, touring, tabloid gossip, industry-hopping departures). 

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My uncles were young, in their mid-late twenties, when I sat in their cars, studying how they affected adulthood. I wonder now if the youth of their idols had any effect on their self-conception. Certainly, Timberlake’s youth tends to get lost in the retelling of his career and it’s important not only for how unusually accelerated it was, but because of what he stood to prove under such intense global scrutiny. NSYNC formed when Timberlake was fourteen. Justified was recorded and released when he was twenty-one. The compression of that time period is unfathomable and speaks to the sheer ambition of Timberlake’s vision. It also shades in why he has never, to me, stopped appearing so defensive about his success. 

Throughout the process of recording Justified, Timberlake broke up with Britney Spears while fending off rumors that he had single handedly ended NSYNC to make it big on his own. Following the “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl, following his initially sputtering pivot to movies, following his many relationships and breakups, following accusations of selling out. Timberlake has been defending his decisions for the entirety of his career. The only time that didn’t seem to be the case was with his debut, primarily because it’s evident he was trying so hard to get out ahead of expectations. 

The songs on Justified take in the legacy of NSYNC and turn hard in the other direction, heading for the kind of hip-hop-inflected R&B that Timberlake has stated was what he really wanted to be doing all along. At just over an hour, Justified is, despite its many heaters, entirely too long for good taste and yet the perfect length to drive home a statement. In this case, not only could Timberlake hold his own across a variety of different song types, but that his solo efforts would be conducted in good faith with a large cast of black collaborators who respected his talent and his intentions. It’s always been funny to me, the degree to which Timberlake’s features on his albums include rappers and black producers hyping him up, introducing him as a small-town kid just trying to make it big. This persona, inclusive of the constantly-aggrieved lover betrayed and scorned by women, has allowed Timberlake to subsume his defensive public stance into a kind of non-character, one that tantalizingly comments upon personal slights and beefs without naming names or getting too specific. The template for all of this is “Cry Me A River”, the kind of colossal heartbreak diss track that Timberlake has been refining, almost exclusively with Timbaland, ever since. 

Still, the majority of Justified’s tracks follow the spare, earwormy  production The Neptunes had been known for by then, exemplified by their work on Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass”, Usher’s “U Don’t Have to Call”, and Clipse’s “Grindin’”, among other singles. Tight, head-nodding drum parts with Chad Hugo’s signature melodic hooks pervade underrated songs like “Last Night” and “Nothin’ Else”, moments where Timberlake showcases his vocal flexibility and natural flow. Cornier bits, like the gendered call-and-response at the end of “Senorita” or the way he says “neked” on “Rock Your Body”, only enhance the sense that Timberlake was letting loose, experimenting with the boundaries of an unfolding new personality, at once hoping to prove himself an adult and a playful performer. 

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In the grand mythology Timberlake has built up for himself in the wake of his explosive success as a solo artist and actor, there are a few key elements, and omissions, that recur. First is the anointing of his superior talent by Michael Jackson. According to an anecdote Timberlake shared during a Master Class session with Oprah Winfrey, Jackson suggested that the pair sing a duet for the NSYNC song “Gone.” Particularly in the wake of Jackson’s death, a large number of musicians and producers have come forth with stories like these. Their veracity, of course, is difficult to dispute. 

Second is the role of the Neptunes in the production of Justified and the launching of Timberlake’s career, specifically Timberlake’s continual foregrounding of Pharrell and backgrounding of Chad Hugo. In countless interviews and profiles, whenever Timberlake has looked back at that time, he singles out Pharrell specifically, dropping the Neptunes as a collective project. In one particularly awkward instance, on a podcast with Pharrell, Hugo, and Tyler the Creator, Timberlake attributes the writing process of Justified’s Neptunes-produced tracks to himself and Pharrell, at which point Pharrell interjects to include Hugo’s name as well. Timberlake, chagrined, simply moves on. 

For Timberlake, individuality is a top-down affair. In this way, it makes sense that he’s interested in perpetuating a trailblazing personal history, one filled with encounters with singular heroes: Jackson, Pharrell, Timbaland, Jay-Z. Though he’s always enjoyed collaboration, particularly when a black artist can lend their credibility to his aspirations as a bonafide R&B performer, Timberlake also has the shadow of NSYNC dogging him at all times. It doesn’t matter that no one really cares about his past all that much anymore. For better and for worse, what has always remained true, and visible, for better and for worse, is just how hard Timberlake tries to prove himself. 

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Increasingly, I think the idea of genius is really a matter of witnessing. 

There can be no appreciation of what has been created, altered, refined without an understanding of the intricacy and inner workings of the process. Peter Jackson’s Beatles doc Get Back illustrates this very idea, specifically during a scene in which Paul McCartney, sitting with George Harrison and Ringo Starr as they wait for John Lennon to arrive at the studio, seemingly conjures the titular song out of thin air. Qualifying the Beatles’ contributions to the culture is an old pastime and “Get Back”’s status as a top-tier song (or not) has often played a significant part in this debate. But strong feelings one way or the other need not be defended when watching this two-minute segment, as McCartney noodles around on his bass, with title cards presenting the all-too dramatic context that the band, in early 1969, were in desperate need of new song ideas for their record. This bit of underlining has always struck me as contrived, not because it wasn’t true at the time, but because it endeavors to gild an already profound moment of invention. Seemingly within seconds, McCartney winds his way nearer and nearer to creating one of the band’s most recognizable songs. The effect, cut together to appear as if it’s happening in real time, is practically vertigo-inducing. Familiar chords and rhythms and turns of phrase start to flow out of McCartney, all while Starr and Harrison sit nearby, looking utterly bored. Soon, all four members, including a lately-arrived Lennon, join in. 

As powerful as the scene is for the audience’s recognition of “Get Back”, Jackson’s emphasis on the mundane nature of the location of its construction –yawns from the band and crew, cavernous empty backgrounds, wires strung everywhere, the pervasive feeling of being stuck in a dentist waiting room– only underscores that this is how the Beatles’ best and worst ideas were born. Out of necessity, arrogance, and undeniable skill. 

Timberlake gets his own moment in the making of Justified buried deep in the fifteen hours of amateur footage shot during the album’s production, an odd but compelling artifact that’s easily accessible on YouTube and only interesting for truly deranged seekers (like me). It comes in a segment documenting how he and Pharrell Williams created the bridge for “Rock Your Body.” Get Back’s sequence is pared down by editing and narrative, but the largely uncut 10-minute segment shown during the Justified footage is even more impressive for how repetitive it is. Pharrell and Timberlake sit in the control room of the Neptunes’ Virginia Beach studio listening to the instrumental section of the “Rock Your Body” bridge on repeat, trading vocalizations and lyric ideas back and forth constantly. 

Where Peter Jackson crafts a sense of spontaneous genius in his film, which is compiled from footage shot for a documentary made with the express intention of capturing the Beatles’ process, whoever shot Timberlake’s journey through his first solo album seems to have done so more for record-keeping than promotion. Captured on DV tape, with the verve of a home video, the Justified footage appears even more pedestrian, almost accidental. And so does the extended sequence where Pharrell and Timberlake charge their way through to the final vocal arrangement for “Rock Your Body,” a monotonous call-and-response that slowly opens up into the familiar. 

Later in the proceedings, Pharrell sits with the studio engineer, saying, “I’m just so interested in seeing what records each channel plays.” 

“This is like VH1,” the engineer responds.

“But the wild shit is, black radio stations have to play this shit too,” Pharrell says. “How you not going to play this? R&B that’s out right now can’t fuck with this. Play it from the top.” 

What both documentaries provide, separated as they are by decades, is a reminder of what it takes to become inevitable. Some, like the Beatles, approached the prospect of their own fame and musical ability with amusement, with begrudging trust in each other despite their many, many disagreements and conflicts, with a view towards freedom at the other end of their time together as a group. Others, like Timberlake, who sought legitimacy as a stand-alone adult act, who set out to reinvent, or at least revitalize, an entire genre, and in doing so, courted some of the most prominent producers at the time, pushed their way to the top by brute force. 

It’s the latter acts I’m more interested in anyway, mostly because it’s rare that they stay popular. When I see someone like Harry Styles, whose career lightly shadows Timberlake’s albeit without the same measure of talent or industry savvy, I think of what’s taken away from an adolescence lived in the spotlight and what’s gained through an adulthood developed in the same arena. Justified doesn’t live on because of nostalgia or retrograde cultural sensibilities. The songs that have survived and thrived from the album are indelible masterpieces, but they also make plain the circumstances under which they were crafted. After all, Timberlake’s solo statement wasn’t one that hoped to smash the record industry, merely climb up to its most vaunted ranks. I listen to the album and hear simultaneously melody, magic, and money trading hands. I hear my childhood and my uncles and my mom and me beatboxing with Timberlake, shaking our heads and laughing at how impossible it feels to stop tapping our feet. I hear the eternal work of a born showman. I hear the pen scratching on the page, writing and rewriting the same chapter over and over, until what’s been perfected isn’t a tableau but a collage made to look like a self-portrait. 

Nicholas Russell: Born, raised, and based in Las Vegas.  

His work appears in The Believer, McSweeney’s, Vulture, Reverse Shot, The Point, The Baffler, No Contact Mag, and Sight & Sound, among other publications. Nicholas has attended Short Fiction workshops at VQR and Tin House, as well as the Critics Academy for the New York Film Festival and the Press Inclusion Initiative at the Sundance Film Festival. 

Currently, He's a columnist at Defector (formerly at Gawker), managing editor at Still Alive Magazine, a contributing editor at Bright Wall/Dark Room, and a bookseller at The Writer’s Block.