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'I'm A Slave 4 U' marks a change in musical direction for pop-superstar Britney Spears - the raw vocals and uptempo pop reflect the star's development from teenager to young woman... There are many guest collaborations on Britney's new album including a contribution from her famous boyfriend - N*Sync's Justin Timberlake.
Reading these sleevenotes reminds you ten years can be a long time. Those last six words are as compact an example of such as you might hope to find here, and of course Britney herself is pushing 30 now.
The trouble with this record is, I just don't believe in it. It's not the fact that she didn't write it herself (it was in fact written and produced by The Neptunes, who seemed at the time to be taking over from Dre and Timbaland as the top producers of the day), it's that the whole effect comes over as so contrived, a marketing department's idea that now she wasn't a teenager she'd have to start making sexier sounding records. Even though I can intellectually believe that she liked this sort of music, and subsequent events strongly suggest that the lyrics of this song weren't inaccurate either, it somehow doesn't allow the suspension of disbelief, maybe because it overplays its hand somewhat, from the naff spoken intro onwards. It's not a career high for the Neptunes musically either. Still rather better than the records she seems to make on autopilot now, but not by much.
Also appearing on: Now 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 57, 58, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73
Available on: The Singles Collection
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