Justin Timberlake is everywhere. Or at least he seems to be.
The actor and pop/R&B phenom recently hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the fifth time — a historic event that drew appearances from comedic heavyweights like Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase. He followed that up by co-hosting “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” for a series of consecutive nights dubbed “Timberweek.”
In February, he was named the creative director of Bud Light Platinum, and a slick new commercial for the beer features the crooner performing his comeback single “Suit and Tie,” which he also performed at the Grammy Awards alongside rap mogul Jay-Z.
This summer, JT and JZ will embark on a joint stadium tour that stops in 12 cities. And this week, Timberlake drops his much-hyped third album “The 20/20 Experience,” which follows up his 2006 multi-platinum masterpiece “FutureSex/LoveSounds.”
With the barrage of well-timed advertisements, performances and hosting duties, the superstar’s return to music after a seven-year hiatus feels like a pop-culture tidal wave. And the excitement is — ahem — justified, because his genre-bending brand of R&B fills a massive void left by artists like Rihanna, Chris Brown, Ne-Yo and Usher.
All of them launched their careers in R&B to one degree or another, and all of them have since switched to a dance-pop sound that inspires fist-pumping sessions and dominates club dance floors, but leaves little in the way of lasting impact.
Currently, there are few black artists who can lay claim to successful R&B careers. The-Dream is still making breathtaking R&B, but he has gained the freedom to do so by writing and producing mega-hits for other artists and forming his own label imprint, Radio Killa Records.
Beyonce is certainly a superstar, but it’s hard to describe her music as R&B, even if you slap a “contemporary” label in front of it. Frank Ocean is a young mover and shaker in urban music, but it’s telling that the Grammy he nabbed was for Best Urban Contemporary Album; even the Grammys don’t quite consider his music R&B.
Solo artists Tyrese, Ginuwine and Tank formed the supergroup TGT in 2007 to combat the takeover of techno-style pop music and resurrect the dying R&B genre, but they’ve yet to release an album.
Keyshia Cole and Mary J. Blige both bring a hip hop-soul aesthetic to R&B, but these days, you’re not likely to hear much of their music on mainstream radio. Trey Songz hasn’t wavered from his sex-charged — and often shirtless — brand of rhythm and blues. But while he’s achieved some success in urban spheres, he’s far from a household name.
So one has to wonder why black R&B artists in a genre once brimming with black genius have either switched to pop or been marginalized by the mainstream, while white artists like Timberlake — along with Robin Thicke, British sensation Adele and the late, great Amy Winehouse, for example — have managed to make soulful R&B music that achieves enormous success.
Adele’s album “21,” for example, has sold over 10 million copies, and her monster single “Rolling in the Deep” sounds like it leapt straight out of 1967.
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