I was eleven years old when Justin Timberlake came out with his second studio album, Future Sex Love Sounds. The first time I heard it was during JT's media tour for the project. It was on Jay Leno's Tonight Show that he performed the song of the year, "Sexy Back" with Timbaland and what had to be the original version of the Tennessee Kids, Timberlake's live band. The track was unlike any other groove I had heard, and the guy he had playing lead guitar at the time, Mike Scott, was so smooth strumming those funky chords as he rocked his shoulders back and forth that I ended up re-watching that performance over and over again on TiVo.
That song and FSLS, which turns ten in September (!), was the first full-length album I ever listened to. All twelve songs are classics, but the one song that stands the test of time that my mom will hum every time it's played is "Summer Love". For twenty seconds all you hear are those blaring organs with a classic Timbo bump until Justin jumps on his swing rap, "Ridin' in the drop top/ With the top down/ So you switchin' lanes girl." The pauses in the song and the melody is enough to hook you for years to come, and evidently, it had a similar affect on other millennials, too.
On the heels of his debut album, Missed Calls, Philadelphia native Tunji Ige released an eight-track mixtape today, entitled Prince of July. Packed with several freestyles, Ige saves his best for last as he goes off-the-dome over the 2006 throwback. Spitting, "White people/ Black people/ Brown people/ Yellow people/ In the streets/ Make a n**** wanna crack people," he shows how to flex the fundamental bars over a classic R&B sound. The vibe is refreshed, but I can't help but feel old as songs I only knew by their track number begin to be remixed by today's budding artists. Check out the summer time rhymes below.