20 years ago today, justin timberlake released ‘futuresex/lovesounds’ 💿🔥
the album debuted at no. 1 on the billboard 200 📈
it gave us hit singles like “my love,” “what goes around… comes around,” and “sexyback,” which became timberlake’s first solo no. 1 on the billboard hot 100, spending seven consecutive weeks atop the chart 🏆
'futuresex/lovesounds' went on to win four grammy awards:
▪️ "sexyback" / best dance recording (2007)
▪️ "my love" feat. t.i. / best rap/sung collaboration (2007)
▪️"what goes around... comes around" / best male pop vocal performance (2008)
▪️"lovestoned/i think she knows" / best dance recording (2008)
what’s your favorite track?
In that split second Enzo Fernandez has only one choice. Yes, he can lose his nation the World Cup. But then he would miss the chance to commit an amazing, amazing, incredible foul. And if you understand Enzo Fernandez, you would understand he never even had a choice to make
"We were off for 2 months, there was no reason for us to be off 2 months…There's some fools at home and on the internet saying we were talking bad about the players, so they made us work less. Shut the hell up!"
— Charles Barkley
(h/t @NBA__Courtside)
NEW: ESPN’s Ryan Clark accuses Uber drivers of “musically profiling” him by changing the songs when he gets in the car.
“I am tired of being musically profiled in Ubers.”
“The [driver] doesn't even ask me. He just changes the radio. First song, All Eyes On Me by Tupac. That's not even one of the songs I listened to from that album.”
How traumatizing.
«Tout cul tendu mérite son dû»
L’ex-animateur, Vincent Cerutti, vedette de TF1 a comparu mardi devant le tribunal correctionnel de Paris pour avoir mordu les fesses d’une collaboratrice
Il risque 6 mois de prison avec sursis et 10 000 euros d’amende
➡️ https://t.co/22KiHk1Dpz
🚨😳 | 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 : LEAKED conversation between Brazilian model Anna Silva and Vinicius Jr:
• Vinicius: "Send a [s*xual] video 🙈🙈."
🗣️ Anna Silva's audio: "I'm not the kind of woman who's going to send you videos when you haven't done anything to deserve them. You talk to me when you want and ask me for a video..."
"It would be easier for you to subscribe to OnlyFans or go to a p*rn website, because for me that's just maniacal, really... You're so egocentric."
• Vinicius' response: "Sorry, baby. I understand you perfectly. My bad... We started off on the wrong foot, and I hope things get better. Respect always come first!" 😬
Michael Porter Jr. says Nikola Jokić texted him, “Make sure you wear condom out there,” after his trade to Brooklyn 😂😂😂
(h/t @DNVR_Nuggets / @Andrew_Fenichel )
When Tyla said she is not Black but Coloured, she was not speaking into the American conversation about race at all. She was speaking in the language of her own country, shaped by its own history. Yet her words detonated in America as though they had been aimed there. This is what happens when a nation has spent a century convincing the world that its definitions are the only ones that matter.
America’s greatest export has never been war. It has never been democracy. It has never been freedom. America’s greatest export is the dream of itself.
It is not that the films are inherently better. It is not that the music contains some mystical note absent elsewhere. What America has, and what it has always had, is money, reach, and a machinery built to make its image the centre of the world.
This was not accidental. It was policy. It was the soft arm of empire. To project yourself outward until your face is the first one people recognise in the mirror.
And so the American way of life became the default. Other cultures were filed into two neat drawers: savage if they challenged the story, exotic if they could be sold back to you.
If you are Black, your first cinematic self was likely African American, the rapper, the sitcom character, the hero of a Spike Lee joint. If you are white in Europe or Australia, it was the white faces of American sitcoms and stadium tours. Whoever you were, your first image of yourself came with an American accent.
Over time, Americans began to believe the story they had written. When you grow up in the country that built itself into the cultural Mecca, it is easy to think you are the best simply because you are on top. You forget, or never know, that the game was fixed long before you played it.
But the monopoly is breaking. Nigeria’s Nollywood now speaks across oceans. South Korean dramas leap borders. India’s Bollywood never needed permission to fill theatres. Spanish thrillers keep strangers awake at night. Slumdog Millionaire, Squid Game, Money Heist, Shōgun — all aimed partly at the American market because that is where the money is, but no longer about America.
And here is the thing. Black Americans, who fought to be seen in their own country, became the global face of Blackness. That is a remarkable achievement. It was also made possible by the same system that excluded everyone else. Now Africans, Caribbeans, and Afro-Latins tell their own stories without making room for American centrality, and the absence is noticed.
We grew up watching you. You did not grow up watching us. And now the internet has levelled the ground just enough for others to speak without hesitation. Tyla’s words land differently because the world no longer accepts America as the only arbiter of meaning.
America’s greatest export was never its art. It was the power to decide which art, and which identities, the world would see. That power is no longer yours alone. There is both justice and loss in that.