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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Timbaland and T.I. join Timberlake at Philips
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The singing and dancing juggernaut known as Justin Timberlake is as stylish as a matinee idol and as talented as all get-out. He also happens to have some gifted buddies, two of whom lent him a hand Tuesday night at Philips Arena. (Did you go to the concert? Send us your pictures by clicking here. To view reader photos, click here.)
The Atlanta rapper T.I. and the Virginia producer Timbaland both made guest appearances in a two and a half hour concert that showcased Timberlake’s vocal, musical and physical range.
He sang, he danced he played. He came, he saw, he conquered.
Using the word “range” to describe Timberlake’s voice is admittedly a bit of a stretch — his reedy vocals give Thom Yorke nothing to worry about. But Timberlake knows how to make his voice work for him. He moves easily from falsetto crooning to a kind of speak-singing that falls somewhere between rap and Lou Reed.
In concert, Timberlake determinedly sang several ballads, his weakest song form, in an obvious attempt to illustrate his completeness as an artist (and maybe to pad out his setlist, since he only has two solo albums to draw from). This was so important to Timberlake that he closed the show with an encore of the ballad “All Over Again” instead of the stupendous version of “SexyBack” that came just before, featuring Timbaland.
T.I. showed up very early in the set to deliver his verse on the collaboration “My Love,” the song that the duo recently performed together on the Grammys. He arrived to an explosion of cheers, and left the stage after his job was done, never to be seen again for the rest of the night.
Timberlake handled the collaborative songs with generosity — he may be a superstar, but he’s not a spotlight hog. And as if to drive home the point that he’s a real artist, and not just a pretty face, he played multiple instruments over the course of the night, including a guitar (on “Like I Love You”) and an upright piano (on several tracks).
Above all, though, the show was most memorable for Timberlake’s dancing. For awhile, the Atlanta R&B star Usher seemed to be Michael Jackson’s heir apparent. These days, with Usher between albums, Timberlake is the man.
He is utterly transfixing to watch — his motions look less like reactions to the music and more like extensions of it. He gets up on his toes, he sweeps his leg, he struts and jumps and grinds. Tuesday night, he made it look as though the music was literally flowing through his body.
