Whether or not Justin Timberlake is the sexiest man in music, he's certainly the most elusive. It takes several weeks, hundreds of emails, endless calls to his 'team', aborted trips to Los Angeles (where he lives), Barcelona (where he's filming a video for his new single, 'SexyBack'), and, finally, two trips to Paris to meet the latest prince of pop. The explanations come thick and fast. Spain was never on the agenda. He's at a wedding in the south of France. He's back in Paris, in a studio, laying down some final tracks.
Finally, he's 'uh... on a boat... somewhere', celebrating the Fourth of July with a group of friends. Also, he's got his laptop with him, so no, you can't hear the new album, his hotly anticipated second solo outing, FutureSex: LoveSounds, because the master copy is on the laptop and he won't let it out of his sight and well, gee, no one can phone him because he's him.
'I'm totally sorry,' says a very polite, Timberlake a few days later. He has eventually appeared in a cosy suite at the top of a boutique hotel in Paris, where Team Justin are basing their European operations for this campaign to cement his status as the pop world's leading male. Ever the charming Southern boy - 'well, at the core I am' - he is wide-eyed with apology. 'I think there was some kind of... ah... breakdown in communication...' he says unsurely, in his melodious, Tennessee twang, where all the 'I's are 'aaah's. As for the 'sexiest pop star' label, he's satisfyingly self-effacing. 'I think you have to take into consideration that there's the Christina Aguileras,' he smiles, rubbing a finger on the corner of a table. 'I mean, I think you should pick a female. I don't aspire to it - I'd rather they listen to whatever I've created and feel that they're the sexiest pop star in the world. But if people think I'm sexy, that's very flattering.'
Box-fresh in William Rast (his own label) jeans, bright white trainers, a checked shirt, and white Abercrombie & Fitch boxers - the band of which he reveals every time he stands up, needled by an awkward subject - he is certainly handsome and well-sculpted. And, sigh, yes, the 'Trousersnake' is pretty sexy. With his grade 4 buzz cut - thank God he's got rid of those nappyish bubble-curls - and trimmed nails, the 6' 1" singer has clearly grown up from his days of white ties and diamond studs on everything. He gives the impression of being clean, sharp, poised, the sort of man to press himself to perfection. Just a few days ago, in fact, he spent a whole night in the recording studio putting the finishing touches to the new record. 'I do apply pressure on myself,' he says, smiling and hooking a foot over the arm of his chair. 'Since a kid I've thought that if you apply more pressure on yourself than what's needed, you're going to get something back.'
And how. Whatever the truth behind the to-ing and fro-ing, the setting of schedules and the changing of plans, this particular workaholic is now ready to knuckle under as only he knows how. Once our lengthy and intimate chat over breakfast is over, Timberlake will whizz through 25 interviews with the French, Dutch and German press in a single 12-hour shift, while his team - record executives, his tour manager Andre, and his mother's friend, the ex-schoolteacher Renee, who is also his manager - face the logistical nightmare of playing as much as they can of the new, and fiercely protected, record to all of them. Outside, the paparazzi prowl. They know Justin's in town - it's pretty obvious, after all: downstairs, there's an enormous minder with a truckful of luggage, personal trainers everywhere and PR girls clip-clopping through the lobby saying, 'It's perfect. Perfect. We'll let you know about dinner. He'll probably have room service.'
Still only 25, Timberlake has already had a lifetime's worth of experiences to form such old-headed notions. 'With the exception of the last two years, during which I've taken a break - if you call four films a break,' he says of his recent foray into Hollywood with movies including Alpha Dog, 'I've been working for 15 years now.' Famously hired, at 10, to sing and formation dance to oblivion as a Mouseketeer on the Disney Channel alongside Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, he then soared, at 14, to even greater fame as a member of boyband *Nsync, and also as Britney's first boyfriend. They dated for four years in total, getting engaged, and then very publicly unengaged. He sang about the split, at times quite savagely, in his first much-hyped solo album, 2002's multi-million-selling Justified. 'The song was pretty explanatory. It was just where I was at,' he says of this 'favourite' track, 'Cry Me a River', a bitter ballad about how Britney had off-handedly dumped him after she had an affair. The video even featured a Britney lookalike, whom the real Timberlake stalked through her apartment. 'I let it just dictate itself,' he continues. 'Those were the songs I wrote; and that's the way it came out. The video was one of those cinematic moments where we wanted to root for the bad guy: me. I broke into the house, kicked her things around, smelled her hair. It was savage. Creepy. Really, extremely dark, Kubrickian retribution. But it seems so long ago now; ancient history. Just a moment in time...just a moment in time,' he repeats. 'That's why I'll be happy when this album comes out.'
If Timberlake stood on a musical precipice last time around, trying to convince the world he was more than some Buttfuck, Tennessee boy-band soon-to-be-has-been, he stands on even more of one now with FutureSex. 'I did Justified in six weeks,' he explains. 'This one took me a year, so it's more, yeah, considered. I felt pressure, which is why it was more considered. For the first record I didn't know what to expect, I was flying by the seat of my pants. Now, I thought, I need to make an epic record, a consistent sound, a body of work. I didn't have to make an amazing record before, but now I have to. It has to be better than the last one.' He's also got a point to prove: 'Music's gone to such shit,' he says of manufactured acts. (He of all people should know.) 'Kids only need something for a minute. People don't make career records any more: this is an opportunity to say fuck that.'
Consequently, he's made a few tweaks to the artistic line-up. Before, he tapped into an impressive array of talent, mainly from hip hop and R&B: Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo of NERD, P Diddy, Bubba Sparxxx, and Tim 'Timbaland' Mosley. Together, they created a sound that was hip, sexy and new, an unusual achievement for a star previously so closely associated with bland music. 'Justin's vocals are always immaculate and he has a remarkable ear for melody,' says Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, who Timberlake presented with a Lifetime Achievement Brit award in 2004, coming over especially from the States. 'He is a voice of his generation, and the one that seems to have captured people's imagination on both sides of the Atlantic. He has put his finger right on the pulse of what people want - that combination of groove, melody, and soul. This is what's put him in a league of his own.'
With his slick, hip-popping dance routines and accomplished falsetto ad-libs, the critics' rapturous comparisons with Michael Jackson seemed well - indeed - justified. 'If the first album was characterised by Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder,' he says now, 'this record is more like Bowie and Prince.'
This time, Timberlake has co-written and co-produced all the tracks on the album himself. And while Williams has gone, the influence of Timbaland - the man most commonly credited with creating the modern landscape of hip hop - has been key. 'He's one of the best three hip hop producers in the world,' says Timberlake, who has also been described as a sort of R&B version of Eminem, the white man doing black music, just like Elvis (who, incidentally, knew Timberlake's granddaddy). 'But at the time [we started talking about the album], he was listening to rock music, and I was listening to rock music. The Beatles, the Stones, the Eagles and the Beach Boys, particularly the Eagles, my favourite band of all time. They fused country and rock. I love fusing things too, so we decided to take the hip hop approach to making a rock song.'
Small wonder then that Timberlake worked with Rick Rubin, too, the man responsible for fusing rap and rock on Run DMC and Aerosmith's 'Walk This Way'. 'I went to him,' says Timberlake. 'The person that put the bug in my ear - this is one of those name-dropping celebrity stories - was [the comedian] Chris Rock. I said, "Do you think he would work with me?" Then I saw Rick at [the music festival] Coachella, where I wanted to see Weezer and Coldplay and Nine Inch Nails. I walked up to him and said, "I'm Justin", pretty much like that. "Will you work with me?" And he said, "Sure!"'
Quite an array of talent, granted - but actually getting to hear much of this music is easier said than done. Despite the fact that his first single, 'SexyBack', will be hitting the airwaves in a matter of days, Timberlake appears to be having slight difficulties letting anyone near his infamous laptop.
'I have trouble naming my songs,' says Timberlake, somewhat sheepishly, of 'SexyBack'. It turns out that it's 'sexy back' as in the song's chorus 'I'm bringing sexy back', rather than 'a sexy back'. 'The chorus is very James Brown-ish, call out and repeat, like "Sex Machine",' Timberlake explains, with a little rendition. He often breaks into song, clapping, beat-boxing, or improvising, even opera. 'I wrote it from top to bottom. "I'm bringing sexy back, yeah! I'm bringing..." It's a very physical song, meant to provoke... sexual dance. "Sex Machine" is the closest reference. If David Bowie were to cover "Sex Machine". "Rebel Rebel". "Got ya mother in a whirrrrl..."'
He's off again. 'SexyBack', an urgent, pulsing track, a cocktail of soaring, distorted vocals and heavy, electronic chords threaded together with rap, seems to be the album's mission statement. Like many of his new songs, it is musically complex; a fusion of rap, rock, funk, soul, gospel, new wave, opera, world music... everything, really. But it certainly does sexy alright: everyone's nodding their heads and mopping their brows, and it's only 8.40am. While the futuristic element looms large - 'the musical landscape of Tron', as someone rather lyrically describes it - Timberlake's familiar percussive beats and high, soulful voice are all still very much in place. 'That's the Prince influence,' he says of the vocals.
Another track, 'Sexy Ladies', is pure Prince. 'Of course I'm influenced by him. I also grew up five minutes from Al Green, so I've been heavily influenced by falsetto singing, the Bee Gees and Brian Wilson. I don't have a humungous belting voice - I'll leave that to other people.' Like Tom Jones? 'Like Tom Jones,' he smiles.
Although the song's slightly awesome lyrics - 'I'm bringing sexy back, I'll show yo'motherfuckers where it's at' - and its meaty pumping do not make 'SexyBack' an instant crowd-pleaser, it definitely grows on you. More immediate is the next single, 'My Love': a brilliantly languid love ballad, prickling with dark emotion. One of a number of expressive soul tracks - another being the Rick-Rubin-produced 'Another Song', a homage to Timberlake's favourite singer Donny Hathaway - 'My Love' is arguably the album's 'Cry Me a River'. 'It is similar. You go back to Aaliyah's biggest record, 'Are You That Somebody' - it's similar to that too because it's that percussive ballad,' says Timberlake, ever keen to reinforce his love of soul, blues and the music of his home, the Deep South. The lyrics seem very personal, too: 'There's just one thing I need from you: say "I do".' Is any of it autobiographical?
'No,' he says, firmly. 'The line before that is "this ring here represents my heart". It's about marriage, and love, and...' He gropes. 'It's not specifically about marriage, but about a humble approach to love. None of it is autobiographical, though obviously I have experience to draw from.'
Well, there's plenty to be getting on with. How different things might have been had Justin Randall Timberlake, the only son of Lynn Harless and Randy Timberlake, chosen the expected path of Midwestern anonymity. 'I'd have made nothing of myself in a normal environment,' says Timberlake, who at eight was already winning pageants. 'Now I'd have been building houses with my uncle. I might have gone to college, but I don't know if I'd have made it through, there's too many...women. Women, drugs and debauchery. I'd have gotten into trouble.'
Instead, he braced himself for celebrity, working constantly, auditioning endlessly. He perfected his famous dance skills in the clubs he visited across Europe with *Nsync. 'I've never taken dance training,' he says. 'Only when I did the television show when I was a kid, but it wasn't pliés. When we got signed I was 14; we came over to Europe - here you can get in the clubs when you're like nine - and that's really where I learned to dance freestyle.' Unlike Michael Jackson, Timberlake doesn't regret his 'lost' childhood. 'In my younger years - that sounds funny from a 25-year-old - my adolescence, I was so protected, [working] was really all I cared about,' he says. 'At 17, when you're around hot females all the time - you're like, "Oh my God!". You got into clubs and hung out with models, and you're like, "OK, I really don't need to be in high school".'
Nowadays, the constant stream of totty has become much less kid-in-a-candy-store for him. 'If someone throws themselves at me, it doesn't really have much to do with me because they don't know me,' he says. 'I'm old-fashioned. I need to spend time with someone. The most a stranger can say to me is, I like your music - the hoopla situation doesn't have anything to do with me. The hype is the hype and you have to roll it up and put it aside from your life. You have to remove yourself from it.'
Whatever: he is loath to 'fuel the fire', as he puts it, with unconsidered brushes with the press. 'What I really think is that I've never done anything that bad,' he says. 'I don't show up drunk to functions.
'If Courtney Love shows up to a function, then it's like, "Oh that's Courtney Love." If I show up drunk, it's like, "Oh my GOD!" And, like, Britney's an unfit mother because she put her child in the car-seat backwards,' he says, referring to the latest media storm in America in which his former girlfriend was heavily criticised. 'I feel bad for her,' he says. 'We all make mistakes. We all came from the same school, with Christina, myself, Britney. Even when Christina came out with her last record everyone was so shocked. "She's so sexual" - it's like, she's a grown woman! If Madonna had done it, no one would have cared. Madonna's shocking people now because she's so religious. She's burnt crosses and grabbed her crotch. I think that because I don't particularly show my ass everywhere... I don't aspire to that. I'd rather people get naked to my music.'
Oh, you can't help but like Timberlake. He's the whole package. Good at fashion - 'the whole album is like a fashion editorial, YSL and Gucci suits, which goes with the sonics,' he says of the record's artwork, a Terry Richardson shoot - dancing, singing, the lot. That's not to say there isn't a very interesting edge to him, too - Richardson is not a photographer for the fainthearted - a sort of nervy, exciting, don't-touch-my-car bristle about him. A bit Christian, and a bit not, a boy who has nevertheless learned that he can't please everyone so he stopped 'giving a shit about what people thought,' he says. 'Since then, I've done my best work.' Whether or not the new album is a critical triumph, it'll certainly be a commercial one. And anyway, there will always be the fans, thousands of them, as there always have been. 'I understand it means something to people to have a piece of you,' he concludes. 'It sometimes becomes tiresome, though. I don't have a problem stopping, but I've been in a gym on a bench press and people will come up and ask if I mind having a picture taken. And I'll say yeah I do. And they'll be like, "Oh well, you're an asshole". And I'll be like, "Oh OK, I'm an asshole". I'm a pretty nice guy. I'm not pretentious. But you can't be everything to everyone...'
