Over the weekend, el patron de OKP Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson responded to a thread on the Okayplayer boards commenting on Jon Caramanica's tough New York Times review of Justin Timberlake's new album The 20/20 Experience (drops tomorrow, pre-order on iTunes here). The anchor post in the thread was titled "Jon Caramanica ETHERS Justin Timberlake & I kinda agree" and ?uestlove's response was headed "this is hardly Ether." As that header suggests ?uesto pointed out that even with passages like this:
"It’s an album of largely inconsequential beauty, showing Mr. Timberlake as an artist with no incentive to innovate, making this primarily a paean to brand maintenance..."
...the write-up was hardly scathing by Caramanica's standard's (for a pace-car on 'scathing', see his review of Major Lazer's live debut) and proceed to give his erudite 2 cents on the album, including a nugget about the super non-obvious James Brown interpolation on Timbaland's production for "Suit & Tie."
That might have been it, one more little teachable moment of funk on the OKP boards, had ?uestlove not let slip a spoiler to the effect that The 20/20 Experience has a part 2--a 10-track follow-up slated to drop in November of this year. The news made it's way almost instantly to twitter and from there to to numerous music blogs. Now, it is usually our policy to follow the first rule of Site Club (Rule #1: you don't talk about Site Club) and let what happens in the boards stay on the boards. But upon review it is safe to say that this particular ship done sailed already. Without further ado, find ?uesto's full review/rebuttal to the Justin Timberlake review, spoilers included:
this is hardly Ether
its constructive criticism
i will say the album is OVERLY ambitious. like a LOT of ideas crammed into one.
spoiler alert. 20/20 Vol 2 comes out in nov. (10 songs now.....10 songs later= 20 vision)
i admire the balls it took to make this record. cause he coulda easily urshurd his work in and made diplo his teddy riley to 20/20's dangerous instead of sticking with timb's Quincy.
feel me?
i like throwback Timb. (he played me songs out of order and off both records so i don't know what made the final cut) so i was shocked he wasn't 4 on the flooring it like the timb of 2005 was doing. like these joints were straight up missy/magoo timb and justin said he wanted timb to "get back in his real zone" even if it meant alienating the tweens born after 86 who never ever heard of the sly slick and wicked
i mean suit and tie is the MOST UNLIKELY james brown production reference
but of course unless you got a master degree in soul-ology this won't mean shit to you.
and i told him my assistant zarah (born in 88) was frowning like "i don't like this song"
and is he cool with the fact that only 35 year old people who love their soul in 95 bpm zone will "get" this song.
and he was like "why do we put all of our power in the hands of 18 year olds....i wanted to make a joint that 40 year olds would love too"
and by the time the video came out all the 86 after sect were aboard again.
(i agree the only thing i don't like about suit and tie is jay's beat switch up.....its cute....but its a pander move---if you gonna go 40.....go 40/40 with it"
anywho....i love the songs, but was worried on how he will cut the prime rib to feed to toothless babies.
ballsy move however.
i applaud ballsy moves
