ALBAWABA - Justin Bieber in new album “Swag” mixes R&B with controversy.
For years, listeners have questioned whether it is appropriate to separate an artist's work from their personal life. But how can we distinguish artists from tabloid personalities? The album "Swag," which Justin Bieber unexpectedly published on Friday, raises the latter question but does not provide an answer. It makes us think about how pop music gets stolen by the pseudo-events of celebrity, while pop superstardom is given life by them.
Celebrity Bieber has been in the spotlight again this year, from social media meltdowns to relationship speculations to financial, spiritual, and fitness probes. He even confronted paparazzi at Coachella, shooing them away, and then stood up for himself, saying, “It's not clocking to you that I'm standing on business?” which became a meme.
Justin Bieber Instagram profile
I dislike mentioning paparazzi in album reviews, but Bieber makes it impossible not to: Both occurrences are probed on “Swag.” Bieber discusses his viral moment from weeks earlier with internet comic Druski, who serves as his soundboard for three skits.
“I have had to go through a lot of my struggles as a human, as all of us do, really publicly,” Bieber tells Druski on the appropriately titled “Therapy Session.” “People always asking if I'm okay weighs on me.”
Except for the interludes, “Swag,” a modest, unassuming album that blows kisses to his wife, Hailey Bieber, with lovey-dovey (if false) platitudes and a hint of TMI bedroom banter, lacks the strain of being a public figure.
This may be Bieber's most consistent album since 2013's criminally overlooked anthology “Journals,” especially compared to his scattershot “Justice.” Producers and composers Carter Lang, Dylan Wiggins, and Eddie Benjamin, accompanied by IYKYK stars Mk.gee and Dijon, acknowledge and capitalize on Bieber's strengths as an R&B lover boy.
Bieber emulates Michael Jackson's glottal stop hiccups, Babyface-produced slow jams, and MIDI keyboard-created quiet storms over shuffling beatbox beats, gently weeping guitars, and warm-hug synthesizers. In-my-head, in-my-bed, skin-to-skin ooh-babies are Bieber's specialty, even though his voice has lost its teenage delicacy.
Fans hoping for lyrics about his current situation will be disappointed. As expected of the first social media pop singer, smartphones mediate the only brilliant phrases: “That’s my baby, she’s iconic, with an iPhone case, lip gloss on it,” and “You leave me on read, babe, but I still get the message / Instead of a line, it’s three dots, but I can connect them.”
For any insight into Bieber the person, those mood-killing interludes remain. Druski criticizes his recent viral moment's Black language, offers him a Black & Mild, and laughs about his soulfulness and skin tone (territory explored with better success on a nearly decade-old episode of Donald Glover's “Atlanta”). Bieber calls on more than Druski to testify on his downness: In addition to Sexyy Red's over-the-top verse, Gunna's “We've got Future at home” verse and Marvin Winans' church stanza are featured. None of the material is as cringeworthy as two Martin Luther King Jr. statements on “Justice.”
A slow-burning hazy-day R&B record is in “Swag.” However, Bieber's decision to lean into his newest slow-motion celebrity automobile disaster makes it difficult to enjoy the song. Bieber may lament paparazzi life, but he created it. Is he singing, “Every time you don’t say my name / I’m reminded how I love when you say it,” to his wife or the public?
