Selfish

Lush and unhurried, the production wraps itself around you like something expensive — layered synths, a steady groove that never pushes, warm low-end that fills space without crowding it. Justin Timberlake moves through the track with a kind of practiced ease, his falsetto slipping in and out of his tenor with the fluency of someone who has been making this kind of music for over two decades. The song is about devotion expressed as want — the particular ache of being so drawn to one person that generosity and possessiveness blur into the same feeling. It sits comfortably in the tradition of quiet storm R&B, that late-night radio format built for seduction and sincerity in equal measure. While the album it comes from received a complicated reception given the period of its release, the music itself carries the craft of someone who genuinely loves the genre he works in. The references run through Marvin Gaye and D'Angelo without ever feeling derivative — it's reverence rather than imitation. This is dinner-candles music, slow-morning-before-getting-up music, the kind of song that plays in the background when time slows down and the only thing that matters is the other person in the room.