The 20/20 Experience, Timberlake's third solo album and first album in six years, is the first half of a two-piece project which showcases his affection for soul music. The album was produced entirely by hip hop Icon Timberland, with whom Timberlake worked extensively with on his first two studio albums, Justified and FutureSex/LoveSounds.

The "Suit & Tie" singer has received both nods and shrugs from critics, and is repeatedly compared to some of his influences, like Michael Jackson, Prince and Stevie Wonder in terms of vocal styling. The album is said to possess a spacey retro futuristic sound and described as a non-pop, rhythmic, lush bouquet of sounds that may be worthy of the title, "best sounding album you'll hear all year," according to People Magazine.

But, the album is also said to be slow, monotonous, that it takes patience to appreciate, and that it is lyrically-challenged. Most lyrics revolving around relationships and sexual innuendo, sung in a way that was meant to make him sound like a love-hungry romantic, was called "porny" and "awful by The Guardian's Alexis Petridis. Taking both negative and positive reviews into account, it should be said that Timberlake has produced a mature and interesting album that documents how his sound has progressed since being teenage heart throb, if not the subject matter.

The 20/20 Experience has done extremely well, topping the Billboard 200 album chart, the cd becoming Timberlake's second number-one album. The initial predicted first week sales of 500,000 were doubled, the cd boasting 968,000 copies sold. The 20/20 debut peaked higher than any other album of Timberlake's career. Justified premiering with sales at 439,000 during the initial week and FutureSex/LoveSound with 684,000.  

In an effort to continually promote the album, Timberlake announced a world tour during May of this year that will go by the same name as the chart topping cd. The tour is meant to launch in Montreal on October 31st, and will head to Europe during the spring of next year, the UK being the first stop across the pond. He will be performing in nearly 60 cities across the globe, and it will wrap up in Finland during early May of next year.

The second half of the two-piece project, The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2 was released in its entirety for free streaming on iTunes on September 24th.