Timberlake is more convincing as a boyfriend, but more entertaining as a cad: The first five "Future" tracks may be the best 25 minutes of music released this year. They're a riot of undulating bass lines and over-the-top effects: the beat box that underpins "SexyBack" and "Love Stoned/I Think She Knows"; the languid beats, carnival keyboards and harmonies of the T.I. collaboration "My Love."

Timberlake manages not to be swallowed whole by the never-ending parade of producers -- most notably "Promiscuous" architect Timbaland -- guest stars and enough special effects to humble George Lucas, but he tries harder than he should have to. Along with fellow former Mouseketeer Christina Aguilera, Timberlake is currently the brightest star in an indifferent universe, with a pretty great blue-eyed soul voice that's too often swaddled in layers of fuzz or wasted in an overused, Michael-Jackson-but-higher falsetto.

The ballads put him to slightly wiser use. "Losing My Way" is a high-fiber number about a small-town crystal meth addict that sounds like what would happen if, say, Timbaland produced an episode of "Dateline." The comparatively spartan "(Another Song) All Over Again" finds Timberlake channeling Donny Hathaway, accompanied by a tentative piano. It's so plainly geared toward quieting the few remaining Timberlake deniers that it might as well come with an Ask Me About My Impressive Range sticker attached. "What Goes Around Comes Around," bristly and ungallant and irresistible, aggressively evokes "Cry Me a River," the superlative exercise in Britney evisceration that was the high point of his solo debut, "Justified."

With the exception of the clunky Will.I.Am collaboration "Damn Girl," it's hard to imagine how "FutureSex/LoveSounds" could have been any better, though when it comes to, um, randiness, Timberlake is still no Prince, and lines such as "Back up some more / And let me take it off" have the same sexual charge as a proposition from a Care Bear. Someone might want to remind Timberlake that sexiness is like humility, or executive privilege. The more you assert it, the less it means.

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