REVIEW: On ‘Swag,’ Justin Bieber leans into the skid

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For years, listeners have debated whether to separate art from the artist. But what about separating an artist from their tabloid persona? The latter question is asked but not answered by “Swag,” the album Justin Bieber surprise-released on Friday and one that forces us to consider how the pseudo-events of celebrity give oxygen to pop superstardom but steal it from pop music.

It’s been Celebrity Bieber in the news again this year, from social media meltdowns to relationship rumours to investigations into his finances, his faith and his fitness. There have even been two confrontations with paparazzi, first as he shooed them away at Coachella and then as he stood up for himself – “It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business?” – in a way that became a meme.

It brings me no pleasure to mention spats with paps in an album review, but in this case, Bieber makes it impossible not to: Both encounters are included and investigated on “Swag.” In the latter case, Bieber goes over his viral moment – captured just weeks ago – with internet comedian Druski, who serves as his soundboard across the album on three skits.

“I have had to go through a lot of my struggles as a human, as all of us do, really publicly,” Bieber admits to Druski elsewhere, on the accurately titled “Therapy Session.” “People are always asking if I’m okay, and that starts to really weigh on mе.”

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But apart from the interludes, the pressure of being a public person is absent from “Swag,” a subtle, unassuming album that blows kisses to his wife, the professionally famous Hailey Bieber, with lovey-dovey (if empty) platitudes and a smattering of TMI bedroom talk.

Sonically, this is Bieber’s most stylistically consistent body of work, possibly since 2013’s criminally underrated compilation “Journals,” especially compared with his previous album, the scattershot “Justice.” Credit is due to collaborators who understand and play to Bieber’s strengths as an R&B lover boy: producers and songwriters Carter Lang, Dylan Wiggins and Eddie Benjamin, along with IYKYK talents Mk.gee and Dijon, who bring more than their share of woozy flavour to the proceedings.

Over shuffling beatbox beats, gently weeping guitars and warm-hug synthesizers, Bieber evokes the era of soul music that preceded him, aping Michael Jackson’s glottal stop hiccups, Babyface-produced slow jams and quiet storms made with MIDI keyboards. While his voice has lost its teenage sweetness, Bieber can still deliver in-my-head, in-my-bed, skin-to-skin ooh-babies as well as anybody.

But those looking for any lyrics that speak to his current predicament will be disappointed. The only clever turns of phrase are mediated by smartphones – “That’s my baby, she’s iconic, iPhone case, lip gloss on it,” “You leave me on read, babe, but I still get the message / Instead of a line, it’s three dots, but I can connect them” – fitting for the first pop star of the social media era.

For any insight into Bieber the person, the listener is left with those mood-killing interludes. Druski critiques the enunciation of the Black slang that made up his recent meme moment, offers him a Black & Mild and jokes about his soulfulness and skin tone (territory mined with much better results on an almost decade-old episode of Donald Glover’s “Atlanta”). And it’s not just Druski who Bieber calls on to testify for his down-ness: There’s an over-the-top verse by raunch-rapper Sexyy Red, one from Gunna (a.k.a. “We’ve got Future at home”) and, stunningly, a gospel verse performed by Marvin Winans. (Somehow, none of this is as cringeworthy as including two Martin Luther King Jr. quotes on “Justice.”)

There’s a solid album somewhere in “Swag” that’s a slow-burn collection of hazy-day R&B. But Bieber’s decision to lean into the skid of his latest slow-motion celebrity car crash makes it difficult to meet the music on its own terms. Bieber may bemoan the paparazzi life, but it is a paradox of his own making. When he sings, “Evеry time you don’t say my name / I’m reminded how I love when you say it,” is he singing it to his wife, or his public?

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