We may prefer you go ‘head and be gone with it…
[Video]
[5.67]
Alfred Soto: “‘Sexy Black Timberlake'” is me being objectified as a sex object for my skin color,” he said in an interview, and, well, sure. But with a beat this Compton-indebted (complete with tea kettle synth), a delivery this sinuous, and a lyric so merciless in its vilifying of a nameless bitch, it’s less of a problem to figure out who’s really the victim, and it’s not the guy who promises implicitly to bring sexy back (again?).
[6]
Alex Clifton: Do you know how rare it is to get an actually sexy dance beat with a voice to match it? Justin Timberlake used his falsetto to seduce a generation of teens on FutureSex/LoveSounds, but Channel Tres makes me want to dance. “Charming” feels like the wrong word here because I think that implies more cuteness than sexiness, but there’s a level of dopiness in here that I find endearing. Seductive and a little silly — exactly my type.
[6]
William John: Glossy, head-nodding house spoiled by an obnoxious libretto. “Sexy Black Timberlake” is intended to be a response to the author “being objectified as a sex object,” but Channel Tres’ attitude toward his loathsome subjects seems to be equally dehumanising.
[4]
Julian Axelrod: Now that every new artist is aping a style from decades past, we’re forced to confront the ethics of reinvention. Can you have an emo revival that doesn’t hate women? What are the racial implications of an indie band digging up Graceland thirty-plus years after we realized that album feels kinda icky? If you think rap’s relentless forward motion makes it immune to this conundrum, enter Channel Tres. Or rather, enter the pitch-perfect G-funk synth whine that comes in behind Channel Tres. And before you start rhapsodizing about the glory days of Tupac and crip walks, enter Channel Tres’s hook: “Bitches act crazy/Tryna have my baby/Tryna get in my house.” Now, obviously misogyny in rap is not a ’90s-specific issue, and to his credit there’s a lot more going on here: For one, he describes the song as a rebuttal to the objectification of black men. And sonically, this isn’t lazy Dre cosplay. Nick Sylvester supplies a house bounce MO to Tres’s bounce house flow, and CT rides it perfectly. He’s a bottomless well of effortless cool, a product of that distinctly modern rap wave where none of the lines mean anything but they each sound incredible in the moment. (“Not a fool, a damn fool!”) But that’s what’s so fascinating about that hook: It’s a cherry-picked signifier of the past cooked into a song that sounds like the future, glaring in its incongruity and inspirational in its insignificance. Time is just a construct; the groove stops for no one.
[7]
Ian Mathers: This feels like it shares some of the energy of that time where Luke Cage shows up at Doctor Doom’s castle and demands the money Doom owes him (but, you know, in its actual context).
[6]
Iris Xie: Too bad the song doesn’t live up the hype of that title — I maybe something like a wiry exposé and commentary of Timberlake’s copping of Black music and being able to do it much better, and turning up the rating on the PG-rated nature of “Sexyback.” The latter happens, but the song doesn’t match the initial intrigue. I see what Channel Tres is trying to do with that high-pitched synth noise and some claps trying to do a funk beat, and it’s a somewhat interesting turn of talking about being hypersexually objectified as Black man. However, it’s laidback to the point of being boring, because it’s simply not catchy enough. Ironic songs with commentary thrive when a beat can carry the whole meaning, to the point where you go “hm, nice” when you finally look up the lyrics after the 5th time. No such reception here.
[5]