Rollingstone 2004

At the Butcher  Shop, a steakhouse in downtown Memphis, a  banquet-size table is crowded with people who are  all somehow associated with Justin Timberlake: his  mother and stepfather, Lynn and Paul Harless (who  co-manage his career), his best friend’s  girlfriend, his publicist, some family friends,  business associates, me. We pass our time laughing  and drinking wine and eating filet mignon and  twice-baked potatoes, but we’re really just  waiting for Timberlake. It’s early October, and he  is on his way home to film a prime-time concert  for NBC, scheduled to air the day after  Thanksgiving. He won’t arrive in Memphis until  later tonight, when he flies in on a private plane  from Detroit. Arrangements are made for a car to  pick him up at the airport, but Timberlake calls  more than once to see if his parents are willing  to come get him. “He sounds cranky,” says Lynn,  more with affection than annoyance, after chatting  with her son on her cell.

Timberlake’s name doesn’t  come up again at the dinner table until Lynn  notices my tattoos and starts telling me about  getting her own ink backstage at one of her son’s  shows. Paul is reminded of how Timberlake  persuaded them to let him pierce his ear when he  was thirteen. All of his friends had done it, and  Justin was begging to get his pierced, too. So  Paul came up with a way to make him earn the  privilege. “I told him, ‘You have to write a song  and sing it at a family gathering,’” he says,  beaming with fatherly pride. Paul even drew up a  little contract, to show his resolve. Timberlake  went to his room and wrote “The Earring Song” — a  little ditty that stole its tune from Bobby  McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” He sang it for  his parents on the beach during a Hawaiian  vacation, and as soon as they got back to Memphis,  he went to the mall and got his earring put in.

When I  finally lay eyes on Timberlake the following  afternoon, he is a moving target. He is shooting  background material for the TV special, and for  hours he zips from location to location — Sun  Studio, a Beale Street blues club, an old-school  general store in the sticks, his parents’ house —  in an iridescent-blue Jeep, trailed closely by a  police escort. Really, it’s just another busy day  in what has been a relentlessly busy year for the  twenty-two-year-old Timberlake. He has been  hustling almost nonstop during the eleven months  since his solo debut, Justified, was  released; his only break was a two-week trip to  Hawaii in September that he says was marred by the  constant assault of paparazzi stalking him and his  girlfriend, Cameron Diaz. But the work paid off:  Justified has sold more than 3 million  copies, surpassing even his own expectations. In  October, his performance as host of Saturday  Night Live, where he dressed in drag as  Jessica Simpson, did a note-perfect impersonation  of his pal Ashton Kutcher and donned an omelet  costume to play a pitchman, was so unexpectedly  funny that he’s fielding offers for feature-film  roles. He spent the summer touring Europe and the  U.S. on a blockbuster double bill with Christina  Aguilera. In August, he won three MTV Video Music  Awards, and then won three more at the European  version of the VMAs a few weeks ago.

His position as the biggest pop star of 2003 is  not uncontested — 50 Cent sold more albums and  Clay Aiken generated more cultish hysteria — but  Timberlake was the man of the year for a more  substantive reason: This was his time to prove  he’s not just a boy-band star, not just Britney  Spears’ ex-boyfriend or Cameron Diaz’s current  boyfriend, not just a hunky white boy emulating  Michael Jackson. During the tour with Aguilera, he  played late-night aftershows at small venues, just  him and his band — no glitzy props or  choreography, just a good old-fashioned rock show.  Instead of running with bubblegum pop stars, he  hangs out with the Neptunes, John Mayer, Black  Eyed Peas, Coldplay’s Chris Martin and even the  Strokes. Somewhere along the way, Timberlake  attained the one thing most pop stars don’t, and  the one thing he wanted more than anything else:  credibility.

“It’s a liberating thing  to walk out onstage and see people your age and  up,” he says when we sit down alone together over  beers two weeks later in New York. “And they’re  not screaming just because you’re standing there,  they’re screaming because you did something to  impress them. They don’t put your poster on their  wall — they just like your record.” Timberlake is  dressed, casually, in what is either a vintage  T-shirt or a very good facsimile thereof, a brown  polyester Pony sweat jacket, jeans and sneakers.  His newly shorn hair is barely an inch long, and  he has grown a bit of a goatee since I saw him in  Memphis.

“I know  people have an image of me in their head, but I  want them to be able to see past that,” he says.  ”I want them to see the musicality of what I’m  doing. There’s a portion of people who enjoy what  I do. And it’s been proven. There’s a weight  lifted off my shoulders. I don’t have to worry  about that part anymore.”

Lynn Harless says  that Timberlake’s success this year has come as a  welcome surprise. “At the VMAs, when he won the  award [for Best Male Video] and Eminem and 50 Cent  stood up to applaud, that left such an impression  on him,” she says. “That was respect from a part  of the industry that had dogged the boy-band  thing. Not that he’s ever been lacking in  confidence — because the child would argue with  God — but I think it’s made him feel more  confident.”

It wasn’t  all smooth sailing for Timberlake this year. When  I ask whether he would change anything that  happened in 2003, he laughs and says, “The SARS  concert in Toronto. That was really tough for me  to go through.” It was a rude awakening for a guy  who was feeling pretty on top of the world. At the  summer benefit concert, Timberlake was the odd pop  star on a bill headlined by the Rolling Stones and  also featuring AC/DC, the Guess Who and Rush.  During his three-song set, an audience full of  angry Canadians pelted him with water bottles. “It  messed with my head for a good two weeks,” he  says. “But I saw it coming. I woke up that  morning, and I said, ‘I think these people who are  coming to the show are just really going to hate  me.’ But when Mick Jagger asks you to come do a  benefit concert, do you say no? And then he says,  ’I want you to do “Miss You” with me, as well.’  I’m like, ‘Are you kidding? I might actually  spontaneously combust if I get to grace the same  stage with you. I might actually shoot a wad into  the crowd.’”