Justin Timberlake Apologizes For Past Beatboxing

As far back as he can remember, Justin Timberlake always wanted to be a human beatbox. Even in his *NSYNC days, Timberlake would take every available opportunity to go dorm-room Rahzel on the world. Maybe he was doing it even before then. Maybe he was getting spit all over his hands on The Mickey Mouse Club . I'm not a deep enough Timberlake scholar to know the extent of it. But by the time he reached international fame, Timberlake would think nothing of giving himself a pshh-ficky-hugga-hugga showcase for entire minutes at a time, as he did during *NSYNC's HBO special in 2000.

When Timberlake went solo and started working with Timbaland, forget about it. It was over. Cascades of mouth-noises. It sometimes worked, too. "Cry Me A River" is a pop masterpiece that's full of verbal plips and plops. But as all notions of Timberlake's once-considerable cool fade into the distant fog of memory, his beatboxing fixation becomes a very, very easy punchline. He knows it, too.

In a recent video, the writer and internet comedian Hannah Young said, "We don't talk about Justin Timberlake beatboxing enough... Nobody said, 'Justin, you know, we have drums. This is a professional recording studio. There are instruments available to you.' But no, Justin Timberlake wanted to make space noises with his mouth... And we liked it. That's what I need us to sit with."

Timberlake himself commented on Young's Instagram post, giving what I can only assume is an extremely grave and serious apology:

I often look back on that time as well. I still haven’t come up with any answers. I don’t know how to apologize enough for whatever those ambitions were. Too many boots. Too many cats. I hope you can forgive me. Also, I can’t promise I won’t do it again. God help us all.

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