Justin Inc.
A global tour, two movies, a clothing range and A-list arm candy -- Justin Timberlake is 21st-century pop culture's CEO. The Memphis megastar takes Jonathan Heaf under his wing to hit the Grammys, hang out in Hollywood, talk exes and reveal the secret of his success.
by Jonathan Heaf




    Today, Justin Timberlake wakes up alone. It's just before 9am on Friday morning and he's been in Los Angeles for the past seven days, partly to perform and collect at the 49th annual Grammy Awards, but mainly to take a few days off before rejoining the North American leg of his global tour.

    The scale of the tour is mind-boggling. Caravanning the planet over the next 210 days from America to Europe and then on to Asia like some kind of United States of Entertainment invasion force, by the time Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveShow grinds to a halt in China in September, its 26-year-old star will have performed the precise same 120-minute, body-popping set more than 110 times and in front of a total audience of nearly three million fans. It's no wonder Timberlake is catching a breather while he can.

    Stretching lethargically as he flops about his sprawling faux-Spanish villa that's sunk just between Laurel Canyon and Mulholland Drive, purposefully lost among the prime real estate of the Hollywood Hills, Timberlake checks his "Two-Way" for e-mails and missed calls, responds to various pleas from his forever circling management satellites and wonders why Rachael hasn't fed the dogs.

    Perhaps it takes a minute or two before those fuzzy early-morning receptors slowly spark and blink back into life. And then he remembers: Rachael -- his cousin and personal assistant for more than a year -- had to fly back to her hometown of Memphis a couple of days ago due to a family emergency. That would explain the quietness, he thinks, and the fact that the guesthouse she uses down at the other end of the villa is dark, empty and still.

    Needless to say, such tranquility is a privilege for Timberlake -- "I wake up alone, in an entirely empty house, maybe only once or twice during the entire year," he'll explain to me later -- but he also knows he'll miss Rachael's efficient pair of hands to help him with his life laundry: the day-to-day jobs such as attending to his two boxers, bought by Timberlake's mother Lynn three years ago -- Buckley (named after Jeff by Timberlake) and Brennan (named by Rachael).

    The dogs are hungry and yapping; something Timberlake's head could do without in his still somewhat fragile state: he's had full-blown, stay-in-bed-and-groan flu for the past six days and is only just pulling his toxic body out of the shivering wreckage. He needs to go to the garage, he thinks, to dig out the big bag of dry Eukanuba pellets that are stuffed somewhere behind his black Ferrari, and fill the dogs' bowls. But he's already late. And the continual blinking and whirring of his mobile means his time alone today, all 20 minutes of it, is already up. Still, better than nothing. Maybe Trace can feed them later while he's out at meetings in Beverly Hills?

    Juan "Trace" Ayala III is Justin Timberlake's lifelong best friend from Shelby Forest, Tennessee. Their parents went to high school together and gave birth to Ayala and Timberlake within three months of each other. Ayala is Timberlake's closest, most loyal confidant and has been stuck to the pop star's side even before the days of The Mickey Mouse Club -- the Disney show Timberlake signed up to aged 12. As they got older and the fame started flooding in, although Ayala felt he should stay on at high school and continue with his studying, by his late teens Timberlake had cajoled, enticed and convinced his best pal to move into his palatial mansion down in Orlando, Florida, and go touring with *Nsync.

    They did, and still do, everything together. And, frankly, with Timberlake's current omnipresence throughout popular culture, that's an impressive task for even the most diligent wingman. This month alone Timberlake has two new film releases (Alpha Dog and Black Snake Moan), a sellout show at London's Millennium Dome -- now named the O2 -- a TV mobile deal with the Verizon Wireless network in the States ("JT TV" beamed straight to your phone -- videos, interviews, fashion and, wait for it, travel tips -- all day, 24/7); the European launch of a clothing line named William Rast (after Timberlake and Ayala's grandfathers) and more in-store signings, public appearances and parties than a David Beckham book launch. Timberlake even based his latest single, "What Goes Around", on Ayala's recent break-up with blonde Canadian actress Elisha Cuthbert.

    The duo are the real-life Bill and Ted or pre-row Paris and Nicole. Ayala was buckled in when Britney and Timberlake hopped in a jet and went holidaying down in the Bahamas aged 17; he was there when Timberlake decided to go solo; he was there backstage at the Super Bowl when Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson's bejewelled right breast during "Nipplegate"; he was there BC (before Cameron) and was there AD (after Diaz). Ayala will also be there this morning with his little brother, on the adjacent table to where Timberlake and I will talk, eating buttermilk pancakes and making faces behind his new girlfriend's back. And as predicted, after he finishes his breakfast, Ayala will go and quieten Timberlake's two hungry hounds.

    "We have never been apart really; it was such a small town we grew up in," explains Ayala in the same lazy Southern lilt that Timberlake uses. "He was always the star, always top of the class, getting good grades..." As his best friend, did that ever piss you off? Even just a little bit? "You know what, it didn't. Mainly because we've always had such different tastes. There were actually four of us that grew up together in Shelby -- Justin, myself, and two other guys. We were all best friends, but the other two kept knocking heads with Justin; trying to outdo him. We're still good friends with them but I just think Justin doesn't want someone around who's going to try and compete with him all the time. Justin is ridiculously competitive. But the way I see it, if you can't play against him, you can't lose."

    Usually, it takes about ten minutes to get from Timberlake's house down to Sunset Boulevard but today -- maybe because of the post-Grammy industry exodus or maybe because Monday being the President's Day national holiday, the entire city is fleeing for the scorching coast -- it isn't until past ten o'clock that Timberlake pulls up outside my hotel. In a car the size of a tank.

    It's a gleaming white, brand-new, five-door Jeep Cherokee 07: blacked-out windows, a body shape that would make roadkill out of the LA environmentalists' (and Cameron Diaz's) favoured mode of transport, the Toyota Prius, and a suspension raised so high by its owner that his publicists would be advised to supply a fold-out trampoline to aid easy access. Of course, they didn't, and my first close encounter with Justin Timberlake is as a tennis player to an umpire or as Moses to God; a handshake made above the head and into the heavens.

    "Listen, sorry I'm a little late," says Timberlake, the soft-spoken, impeccably mannered Memphis gent, as he drives us west towards the beaches of Santa Monica, turning the stereo up a little to what sounds like LA's answer to Kaiser Chiefs (ie pop rock but one softer). I later find out this little playback is likely to be no accident. The artist, named Kenna, is a good friend of Timberlake's and signed up to Star Trak Entertainment -- Pharrell Williams' record label. Timberlake has himself recently started his own imprint after a deal to buy Stax Records went belly-up. "It'll be called Tennman, short for 'Tennessee man.'"

    TImberlake's Mr Nice Guy instincts are legendary; the result of being brought up an only child by a small, Southern family, under the stern wing of a mother who knew how to keep a household in order. Christina Ricci, who plays opposite Timberlake in Black Snake Moan experienced it first-hand last year while filming. She was similarly charmed. So much so, in fact, that she had no problem stripping down and doing butt-naked sex with him -- just for the cameras, you understand.

    "I was sort of nervous about meeting Justin for the first time," Ricci explains over the phone. "You think if someone has that much success, and is that famous so young, the chances of him being a total asshole are pretty high, right? But we met in a hotel with the director Craig [Brewer], and he was so sweet -- opening doors, being respectful -- that you can't help but like him. Our first scene together is the sex scene and I'm not wearing any pants and he's got his head in my lap and I'm like, 'We're either going to laugh about this or I'm going to die of embarrassment.' He actually got mad at me for saying how sweet he was."

    "The sex scene was pretty hot," agrees Timberlake as we drive on towards our destination, an unassuming pancake house called Jinky's. "I'm not going to say it doesn't feel weird pretending to fuck someone in front of a man with a sound boom, though. One of the first conversations I had with the director was about nudity. In the first cut you could see my ass but, thankfully, that's now out."

    As he talks, the famous blue-flame, ladykiller eyes are hidden behind a pair of bug-eye black shades. He's dressed in a pair of William Rast baggy blue jeans, a bottle-bleached grey T-shirt with a bucking horse and cowboy on the front, a green and navy blue striped zip-up cardigan that looks like it might have seen better days, and what looks like a brand-new pair of white Adidas shell toes. To be honest, they are the sort of clothes that a 16-year-old might wear to spend all day playing computer games.

    I congratulate him on his recent wins at both the Brit Awards and the Grammys, the latter of which took place the previous Sunday. "Oh, thanks very much, man," he sighs, without any effort to try to hold back a lack of enthusiasm. He doesn't sound particularly thrilled. "Well, listen, I used to care about those awards and trophies... maybe when I was younger. Come on, it's all just a load of bullshit, right?"

    Rather than flippant or modest, this comes out as sounding more than a touch aggravated. This could be Timberlake being his enigmatic self. Having interviewed him four times in the past five years, if I've learnt anything about him, it's that he does "cagey" more professionally than perhaps any other young star.

    But this time Timberlake's reasons run a little deeper. He won two golden phonographs at the Grammys out of a total of four nominations. But he lost out to the Dixie Chicks for Album Of The Year, an award that legendary record company kingpin Clive Davis has described before as "The Big One". But then there's nothing that isn't big about the Grammys.

    For seven of the past eight years, the Grammy Awards have been held at the Staples Center in downtown LA, the current home of the celebrity-endorsed Lakers basketball team.

    The show is torturously long, with the attending audience (me included) having to sit and smile for more than five hours. As I enter the stadium it's more than clear that if the Brit Awards failed spectacularly to live up to its billing as a "carnival of mayhem", then the Grammys is an awfully long way from "the Oscars of the music industry".

    Timberlake has been here rehearsing since 8am, and as he decompresses backstage I take time to walk the labyrinth of tunnels carved out behind the fields of hard plastic seating. Although it's obvious guests have made at least some effort in the wardrobe department, the sparkle of the hired-out penguin suits and Vera Wang frocks is completely lost among the armfuls of sweaty cheeseburgers, deep-pan pizzas and tubs of Diet Coke everyone seems to be slurping from. Caught up in the fast-food melee, I get the feeling the top brass of the entire music industry was on its way toa  bells'n'baubles dinner at Mr Chow's but then decided to take a diversion to a college ball game instead. Even with my golden VIP ticket, the Grammys feel about as glamorous as a Jackass movie trailer.

    On paper, what Timberlake is billed to perform sounds about as cringe-worthy as a bad American Idol audition. In fact, it pretty much follows the same format. Using the pay-per-minute powers of live televised phone voting (ker-ching!), for the first time ever, one of three young girls selected over the previous months and now sat beaming at the front row of the Grammys will have the chance to get on stage with Timberlake and perform one of his hits alongside him. "Wow!" for the lucky winner of course, but surely not so great for Timberlake's rep as an artist with any sort of integrity? Can you imagine Arctic Monkeys asking a groupie up on stage to sing "Mardy Bum"? Before the show begins, you wonder whether Justin Timberlake would be available for anything -- weddings, funerals, Bar Mitzvahs -- so long as the price, or the TV coverage, was right.

    Surprisingly enough, this "Justin Idol" style showcase isn't actually as bad as it sounds, when on stage, Timberlake's magnetism, charisma and pure silkiness manages to provide the audience with one of the most energetic, exciting performances of the entire evening. There's no doubt that every time Timberlake's name is mentioned over the booming Tannoy the squeals from inside the giant stadium ricochet about the walls at three times the volume.

    Tonight Timberlake misses out on a clean sweep, perhaps not unfairly, according to some UK critics. Britain loved 2002's Justified. Timberlake admits that it was his "coming-of-age record. 'Cry Me A River' defined me." But despite the six-month promotional campaign for FutureSex/LoveSounds, his follow-up long player that came out last September, it just didn't catch British imaginations like the previous album. Some critics say this has something to do with an emotional detachment from his music; when he sings, "Dirty babe/You see these shackles/Baby, I'm your slave/I'll let you whip me if I misbehave" on the debut single, "SexyBack", it's clear he lacks a certain conviction. As tight as you close your eyes and think of Timberlake being lashed by some Hollywood siren, you just don't believe he means it.

    Not that Timberlake will see it this way, of course, and he has trouble swallowing tonight's result. "I view the Grammys the same way as I see my deal with McDonald's," he explains to me after the event. "I regret the McDonald's deal. I don't regret doing the Grammys entirely but I wish I hadn't put so much of myself into it. It's kind of interesting. Just like the McDonald's deal, whose market share went up by 25 per cent when I walked into those offices and changed their image; when I did the Grammys, the viewing figures went up by 25 per cent. Hmm, funny isn't it?"

    Barry Weiss -- the bat-swinging president of Zomba Label Group, owned by Sony/BMG (Clive Davis' company), the imprint on which Timberlake is halfway through his four-album deal -- is slightly more expressive about the results. "Justin seemed a little pissed? Well, you can put this on record -- I'm pissed! Justin is a student of international pop culture, and has a fantastic inner compass. With all due respect to the Dixie Chicks, the Grammy voters decided unfortunately that this year they would make some fucking anti-Bush statement."

    As the curtain comes down on the Grammy marathon there's a last frisson of excitement with rumoured Timberlake bedfellow Scarlett Johansson stepping out to present the Dixie Chicks with their fifth gong of the evening. It must be the final insult for Timberlake -- recent tabloid rumour has had the pair down as an item for weeks.

    But this wasn't the sort of excitement Timberlake was after, well, at least not tonight and not here. He really doesn't like losing. And perhaps due to illness, or lack of enthusiasm to party, he exits by the back door and heads back to the stillness of his mansion, his two dogs and the coyotes that appear from time to time on his driveway.

    Jinky's Cafe is located within a cream, somewhat untidy block of tanning salons, nail clinics and burrito outlets opposite the Screen Actors Guild building on Sunset Boulevard. Although flanked either side by glitzy overpriced restaurants for the visiting star-spotters, Timberlake feels it's best to go to a local outlet for the promised pancakes rather than some nondescript hotel foyer.

    After parking the Jeep in the underground car park, me nearly breaking an ankle after leaping out of the damn thing, we walk past bemused LA shoppers and stroll over to Timberlake's chosen spot. "Do you mind if we sit inside? I'm brave, but not quite brave enough to sit right on Sunset Boulevard."

    "Are you ready to order, guys?" Our waitress, all rumpled white uniform, pretty eyes and hair tied back in a bun, is doing an impressive job of trying to suppress the ten-foot wide smile that keeps threatening to creep across her face. When she asks whether he'd like his bananas on the inside or the outside of his pancakes, she turns cranberry. "Inside please," says the pop icon. "And can I get some scrambled eggs, OJ and a chicken and apple sausage on the side?"

    Safe to say Justin Timberlake, newly single after breaking up with Cameron Diaz in January just weeks before his 26th birthday, does not have a problem picking up girls. In the past three weeks, celebrity magazines have linked him to Scarlett (who Timberlake kisses and caresses in his new video, "What Goes Around", helping it to become the fastest-selling video on iTunes), Jessica Biel (an up-and-coming young actress with the body of a young Cindy Crawford), Britney Spears (again) and back to Cameron. In fact, shortly after our breakfast American gossip-mongers will claim Timberlake goes for a "secret rendezvous" with Cameron at a restaurant further along Sunset.

    "Listen, breaking up, it's hard to do." Whenever a journalist has an interview scheduled with Timberlake, his publicity machine makes it clear that "Things will go off," at the very mention of Cameron, Scarlett, Britney or any of his rumoured conquests. And when the subject is brought up, Timberlake visibly stiffens and looks hard at the outside traffic. "I don't know if there is anything that I could say, where I could be sure that you would write it so thoughtfully..." He pauses, pulls his arms tight towards him then looks me dead in the face. "It's hard for me to talk about because we're talking about the person that I love and respect and I would never... if I hear anyone say anything bad about Cameron then I'll have something to say to them. Got it?" Got it. "Right. So that's how I feel about that. And that's as far as I'm going to go."

    So what about Britney? I tell him that his Brit Award video acceptance speech where he warned revellers to "Stop drinking! You know who you are. I'm speaking to you. I'm speaking to you," has been spun by a British tabloid as a coded message to the out-of-control hard-partying Britney. "Oh my God I didn't even know anything about this." This time he seems less defensive and more exhausted at what he must feel is the continual idiocy of this supposed relationship with Britney. "Honestly, I am so far removed from that situation. A coded message to Britney?" Shaking his head while sipping his freshly pressed orange juice, Timberlake's mood switches to one of sheer disbelief. It's clear he truly loathes talking about Britney. And as Ayala confirms to me over the phone later on, "She's just no longer part of his life."

    Spend any length of time talking to Timberlake and it's hard to get him to focus on one particular strand of his current career. There's simply too much of it. There's the acting: "I would like to think that will take over, begin to become more a part of my professional life"; the clothing range with Ayala; the production collaborations with other younger artists, such as 17-year-old Chris Brown. But get him on his music, or more specifically how he feels he's figured out how to make a hit record, and Timberlake comes alive, both physically and verbally. He talks faster, his voice turning to a near-whisper as if he's passing on some secret formula on how to turn water into wine, or simple snares and beats into shiny golden discs.

    "OK, take 'Cry Me A River'. I knew that song was serious when I was on a plane going to London in 2003 to perform at the Brits. Michael Stipe [from REM] came up to me and said 'Cry Me A River' was one of the most exciting, well-written songs he'd heard in the past five years. I was almost in tears.

    "So it got me thinking. 'Why can't I do that again?' And sitting in the studio with Timbaland [Timberlake's production guru who did the honours on "Cry Me A River" and most of his second album] it made me realise it's all about layers. Layers! You know, the song 'What Goes Around' is written in precisely the same way; the exact same blueprint." And here comes the lesson in pop magic: "There are four hooks, OK? In each song. There's the verse..."

    Now, this is where things get, frankly, insane. Timberlake is talking at triple speed; he can't push his words out fast enough; clicking fingers, doing some strange thumping sound that comes from inside his throat like a bass drum going through a cheap set of headphones at full volume. Then he starts singing -- singing -- in that high-pitched signature falsetto. Lyrics from "Cry Me A River" loop and link into lyrics from "What Goes Around". He compares each song verse for verse, melody for melody, beat for beat, explaining exactly how his hit formula for one song mirrors the next.

    It's a remarkable insight, although near impossible to follow. It's not surprising to learn that he never writes his lyrics down. But for these few minutes the star-quality -- the charisma, the ferocious inner-drive to succeed, compete, top the charts, break records and win -- bubbles to the surface in high-definition tunnel vision. So this is what makes Timberlake tick; this is what all the fuss is about. This is what makes Justin Timberlake Justin Timberlake.

    Over the next few days, listening back to the tape of Timberlake's remarkable breakfast demonstration, this inner, wild drive within becomes increasingly obvious as a major part of the pop star's success. I speak to Craig Brewer, the director of Black Snake Moan and a man who shot to fame with the remarkable movie Hustle & Flow in 2005. He is slightly older than Timberlake but grew up in Memphis around the same time. Their families knew of each other and both their mothers used to cut out newspaper articles on one another's sons.
    "I think we had a similar experience growing up in Tennessee. It's the sort of place that if you're into singing, dancing or acting and you're a man, people think you're a sissy. Period," explains Brewer. "It's all, 'Let's go hunting, let's kill something.' And that sort of attitude only made Justin more determined to succeed. That success is infectious. In five or six films' time he is going to be a truly remarkable actor. He's so ambitious and such a perfectionist he won't let himself fail. It's like he's a pro basketball player who takes up golf as a hobby and can't help but want to get good at it. He won't believe that it's that difficult to get a little white ball in the hole at the end of the green.

    "He is continually surprising people with his ability. Not so long ago it was sort of cool to hate on Justin Timberlake. But let me tell you a story. When we were filming Black Snake Moan, there was this really experienced crew guy; he'd worked on big, big films and I had the feeling he didn't think Justin was going to be up for this very emotional scene. It was a really intense, violent scene and Justin had to come out of himself and cry and fight and break down. Anyway, Justin nailed it -- nailed it. First take, I glanced round to this crewman afterwards; he was smiling, shaking his head. He turned to me and simply mouthed, 'Justin Timberlake -- who knew?'"

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