FutureSexMagnaCarta…
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[3.12]
Alfred Soto: No doubt encouraged to Make It Real, Timberlake gets gritty and ponderous over piano. I get it: he’s playing the Adele part while Jay frets. The entrepreneur has written no rhymes illuminating the travails of fame beyond his acknowledgment that it exists. A career spent being hilarious about his acquisitive streak and now he bitches about the consequences? My cup does runneth over.
[3]
Will Adams: Timberlake’s piss-poor Bruno Mars impression takes up the first 80 seconds. If that’s not indication enough of how laughably inept this is, consider the extended Nirvana interpolation, or the fact that Timberlake returns to occupy the final two minutes of the song. As for Jay, I would say he needs a nap, but he’s already asleep here.
[2]
Jonathan Bradley: Pretty much everyone involved sounds decrepit, but could I posit that the weak link is actually Timbaland? I mean Justin passably channels Bruno Mars on the otherwise interminable intro, but if we’re still meant to consider Timberlake a heavyweight, that’s not praise. Jay’s references are laughably dated: Tyson, “Teen Spirit,” Hammer? “Unlike Hammer, thirty million can’t hurt me” was funny, but if this is a reply to “Better Run Run,” Hov should remember that he’s half-a-barred better rappers than Hammer. But all of this would be forgivable: Justin’s altar boy hook suits the biblical imagery, and when he’s not trying to squeeze too-clever wordplay from awkward syntax like “fuck your iris and your IRS,” Jay demonstrates he can still, if nothing else, flow. But Timbo fronts like this Shock Value knock off is an acceptable successor to “Snoopy Track” or “Hola Hovito” or “Dirt Off Your Shoulder.” It’s not like he’s lost it, either; “Tom Ford” is a Hov/Timbaland cut befitting the “Big Pimpin'” lineage. “Holy Grail,” though, is easily the weakest lead single Hov’s released to date.
[3]
Jer Fairall: More #richpeopleproblems from Jay, whose flow is still impeccable enough that the sentiments don’t grate quite like they ought to, but JT’s maudlin feature consumes the bulk of the running time, making its five-and-a-half minutes feel longer than the entire 20/20 Experience.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: If you listen closely enough, you can hear the cash registers clanging off inside Jay-Z, Timberlake and all associated individual’s minds. Nothing wrong with a cash grab — something something business, man — but at least have the decency to make something somewhat decent while feasting on Samsung’s dollars. Timberlake tries way too hard to sell the drama of this song, and turns grating fast. Especially since he pops up a lot over the course of this song’s five-plus minutes, his role tacked on as a way for Jay’s half of their upcoming tour to have a cool tag team moment. Speaking of, Jay is just OK here, not totally terrible but also failing to land any memorable lines. Well, actually one thing sticks out. I don’t think Nirvana, heck, any artist, should be turned into a sacred cow, but the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” bit is so tacky, such an obvious ploy at ’90s nostalgia and so awkward that it turns an already mediocre track into a complete miss.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: Even if “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was ever sacred — it wasn’t, christ, not even Kurt thought it was, not even Courtney does — Karmin sullied it first. But the buzzed-out interpolation is still startling, in a “they’re really going for it” way. (Or maybe just “when did this become Yeezus?”) It’s welcome, because nothing else is startling: not Jay recycling references, not Justin feigning soul, not the millionth disingenuous plaint about seductive/deadly fame. The Holy Grail probably looked pretty shabby without the context too.
[3]
Anthony Easton: This needs to be discussed in conjunction with Kanye, in how the singular narratives of sexuality, the collective narratives of fame, and popular culture’s influence become one text, often through a lens of great ego. This layering is often matched to the music. The music here — the hip beats, the piano soft jazz, the R&B crooning, the seamless construction of deconstructed affect — is perhaps stronger than the lyrics. There are also moments of frisson that puncture this seamlessness. I mean, Hammer might be a great example of getting too much money and spending it too quickly, but Jay-Z has proven to be too smart and too rich to be that dumb about capital, so claiming he’s Hammer is just absurd. The Tyson line grates on me, in the same way that Tyson in the Hangover movies, on the award shows, and on The Simpsons does. Tyson might have been a great fighter, but one of the reasons why his career imploded was that he committed violent crimes against a woman. One can see this as well with Michael Jackson — it is an unresolved question about how much money influenced his ability to perform sexual acts that were immoral and criminal. Even Cobain, with his addiction, his mental illness, his playing the game and getting angry at the results — his playing the martyr until the martyrdom was the only real option — needs to be mentioned. Timberlake is just old enough to be personally affected by Cobain’s suicide, and he has been famous enough to know the problems of fame, and so he knows that these examples have a shadow side. But, you know, they are such smart writers that they know the examples they use have counter-examples that are so clean to read. The paradox — wanting to be famous, and pretending it’s only fame that causes the personal scandals — is just so much of a mess here.
[4]
Brad Shoup: What sticks out most is something Carl Wilson already noted: “is he honestly still worrying he’ll end up like Mike Tyson or MC Hammer?” After the lead single, we should be worried that he’s turning into Slaughterhouse. His flow is uncertain, his rhymes on autopilot. JT’s the first voice heard on the record, and he’s stranded astride the twin poles of Disney and Nirvana. Jay’s working his own unification strategy and losing: he sounds neither trapped nor triumphant. He filed as a corporation and now he’s stuck with the marketing plan.
[4]