Album Of The Week: Justin Timberlake The 20/20 Experience

I was worried about this one, and I was mostly worried because "Suit & Tie" sounds less like a first single and more like a work of brand maintenance. Jay-Z's indolent guest-verse was what really got the alarm bells ringing, mostly because it seemed to foretell Timberlake's own version of Kingdom Come, Jay's catastrophic attempt at an out-of-retirement mature album. Timberlake never formally announced a retirement the way Jay did, but he spent more time off in between albums than Jay spent during the time he was supposedly out of the game, and you could almost see the same forces at work, animating them. When Jay came back, he was sapped of all urgency and vitality and violence, instead extolling old-man values like he had this idea that this was what he should be doing. Timberlake, meanwhile, has been playing old-school bandleader on TV all month, strutting out in front of his own custom-designed bandstand with all the verve of an honors kid knocking out a homework assignment that he knows he can ace without even trying. FutureSex/LoveSounds, his last album, was a masterpiece of open-hearted, club-damaged cocaine disco, a complete miracle of a pop album that pushed song-form boundaries without abandoning the slippery, stinging melodies that had helped make Timberlake famous in the first place. After that, "Suit & Tie" sounded like a bored, years-late victory lap, and it promised nothing good. But I shouldn't have worried. If we learn nothing else from The 20/20 Experience, let it be this: Justin Timberlake knows what he's doing.