It’s really easy to hate Justin Bieber. Last year, he was involved in a series of incidents that saw him graduate from being another teenager with an infuriating fringe known mostly for the “Baby” chorus, to a complete fuckboy with an infuriating fringe known mostly for crashing expensive vehicles into other expensive vehicles whilst wearing a bucket hat. Like a real-life Tracy Jordan, Bieber will seemingly do anything to make his life seem like a lawless chaos: from abandoning his pet monkey in a German airport to insisting he can skateboard when he definitely can’t. In 2014, Justin Bieber made more headlines for petty crimes than anything related to music, which is a shame, because that’s the one thing he is actually really fucking good at.
But maybe his musical career is about to see better days. We’re barely into the new year and, while the rest of us are struggling to drag our holiday weight into work, the swaggy prince is already back on his grind, laying down sweet, sweet vocals on Lil Twist’s new track “Intertwine” (streaming below). Surely worthy of music’s first fire emoji of 2015.
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BUT THAT IS NOT ALL.
According to Page Six, Bieber is also reportedly making music with Michael Jackson’s 17 year-old son, Prince. If Prince has inherited even a fraction of his father’s talent, that immediately skews the odds in favour of this being great. And, given that Bieber’s last release Journals was basically a compilation of the kind of tunes Justin Timberlake wishes he was still making, we can speculate that the outcome might well sound like a swaggier version of the time JT hopped on one of MJ’s posthumously released tracks.
But there are some obstacles to this greatness. For some reason boxer Floyd Mayweather, bastion of progressive behaviour that he is, seems to have taken it upon himself to act as a mentor for both Prince and Justin. Page Six also reported that Prince has been “”sampling the Hollywood club scene, juggling multiple girlfriends and generally disregarding his guardians” since he met Bieber, so maybe all three of them will spontaneously combust in a cloud of blank cheques, sex scandals and unfortunate tweets before anyone even gets near a booth.
Either way, hopefully all of this means that Justin Bieber is spending less time egging his neighbour’s houses and more time in the studio where he belongs. Will 2015 be the year he gets bored of doing stupid jerk things that distract from the fact he’s really good at music? Will he give his haters an opportunity to view him as “the voice of an angel” that Tyler, The Creator (and me) always said he was?
Rumour has it, there will be a new Bieber album this year. During a Twitter exchange with MTV US, he was asked: “Hi, Rihanna and Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. Please bless us with new albums in 2015.” To which he replied: “No problem.” So there’s that.
Justin, I implore you, Stop being a dick so everyone can appreciate how great you are. I Belieb in you.
Follow Emma on Twitter: @emmaggarland
