Justin Timberlake is Da Bomb!

Wow. What a concert! I joined about 80,000 other people last Saturday night in the SM Mall of Asia grounds to watch the Shock Value II concert of Timbaland featuring JoJo and Justin Timberlake. And needless to say, I was not disappointed. That this was a benefit concert meant to raise funds to help victims of typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng just made this whole event all the better.


It didn't start out all that well. The show, which was slated to begin at 8pm, kicked off at 9:45pm, almost 2 hours late. Most of the emcees were next to useless - only Sarah Meier seemed to have read her cue cards before getting on the stage and didn't read from them as she spoke. The band only started their sound check past 9pm. And the front acts - Q-York and the Philippine All-Stars - might have gotten better reception from the audience if people hadn't been standing for hours and weren't tired from waiting. Thank God it wasn't too hot and it didn't rain.

Check out the massive crowd!

But when the show started, it was awesome! Timbaland stepped on stage and performed some of his hits like "The Way I are", "Oh Timbland", and "I'll never be the same" and matched it with a great visual/light show:


After an hour of rocking his beats and getting the crowd going, he introduced JoJo who joined him on stage to perform their song "Lose control". JoJo then sang her biggest hit to date, "Too little, too late".


As it turns out, those were the only two songs that JoJo would perform. The DJ then started playing some songs to keep the momentum going, including "Ayo Technology" (I thought they would perform this live). When Timbaland returned on stage, he started to tease the crowd which, by that time, couldn't wait for Justin Timberlake to appear. Timbaland started singing bits of "Apologize", one of my all-time favorite songs, and as he does, Justin, who was still somewhere backstage, started singing along with him, causing the noise level from the crowd to go up several notches (I just really wish JT and Timbaland performed this song fully!). When Timbaland started his light show again, the face of JT came up and this drew even more mad cheers.


So when JT finally took the stage, the crowd went berserk. He initially shared the stage with Timbaland, performing a lot of the upbeat songs from his FutureSex/LoveSounds album like "Love Stoned", "What goes around, comes around", and "My love".


One of the coolest moments of the concert was when Timbaland beatboxed while JT sang a re-arranged version of his hit "Cry me a river". I found this performance on youtube (uploaded by user urfoolingmyleeg), check it out:

uploaded in youtube by user urfoolingmyleeg

He also accompanied himself on keyboard and performed a couple of tracks to slow things down.


Of course it didn't stay that way as he closed the show on a high note by performing more of his massive hits with Timbaland. And just as the show was about to end, JT came out to say "I've retired this song but f*ck it, I love you all so much" or something to that effect and then performed "SexyBack". As the Ticketworld website promised, Justin did perform at least 8 songs (I think he must've done 10?). Frankly, just his half of the show was worth the price of the ticket!

There was a lot of talk in late 2008/early-2009 that Justin Timberlake would have a concert in Manila in 2009 but it never happened, so it's great that he came here as a guest in Timbaland's concert. To be quite frank though, and I'm sure even Timbaland knows this, the real drawing power of this show was Justin. I'm sure most - if not all - of the 80,000 people were there to see JT perform live. And he certainly delivered.

Here's hoping that Justin Timberlake stages a full concert here in Manila as the main artist (and not just as a guest). Now THAT would be truly awesome!