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By now, you've no doubt heard the Timbaland-produced lead single SexyBack for Justin Timberlake's upcoming album. While the MTV crowd and the hipsters have fallen in love with the song, a lot of Timbaland's original fan base, the hip hop fans, haven't quite embraced it. Tim's beats have always used a formula that's heavy on the synths and light on the samples, but his r&b beats tend to sound even more spaced out and pop-oriented than his hip hop beats, which I suppose is the reason for this reaction. While I wasn't initially feeling the song, I have to admit its grown on me after seeing the video about 300 times.
A second track from the Timberlake album, featuring T.I., has been making the rounds over the past few weeks and its got the hipsters and the innanet going nuts. When the promo, lo-fi version of the song was released, it had a label rep's voice looped over the track saying, "Atlantic Records, T.I. Clearance," which apparently was an attempt to discourage p2p sharing. Hipsters are always on some next ish, so they embraced the copy protection voice over, making remixes of the song that featured only the label rep's voice, rocking t-shirts with the phrase on it and chanting it in the clubs.
Fluokids has a link to the T.I. Clearance promo version of the song.
Now that the real version of the song has leaked, sans Atlantic Records voice over, some reviewers are having a hard time containing their excitement over the latest work from Timbaland. While the beat is in a whole 'nother lane from what is typically heard in R&B and hip hop, I don't think its quite as revolutionary as some people seem to believe. In fact, if you were the type to be running around the clubs with glo sticks and xstasy during the late 90's, there's a good chance you've heard several variations of this beat. Take away the beatbox sample and Timbaland's voiceovers, and you have yourself a fairly generic trance song.
I actually like this song, though another Clipse appearance would have worked better than the lazy effort that T.I. puts forth. It will be interesting to see how the general hip hop audience reacts to this beat.
Here's an instrumental dub remix of the song, by Isabel Y Decibel (via discobelle.net, where you can also listen to the real version of the song):
My Love Dub
And if you just can't wait to hear more of Justin Timberlake, go preorder his album FutureSex / LoveSounds, which comes out on September 12th.
9/1/2006 10:21:51 AM posted by Fresh