Not long after standing on business, Justin Bieber shared a remix of his then-viral confrontation with paparazzi on his Instagram. As serious as Bieber appeared in that and other standoffs with paparazzi, sharing a song built out of his frustration suggested some degree of self-awareness, if not levity. That frisson has come to define Bieber over the last several months: He wavers dramatically between genuine ire at his circumstances and irony distance. This all plays out on his Instagram, the only source we have into the singer’s tortured and trolling psyche.
Bieber’s face-off against the paparazzi makes yet another cameo appearance in his new surprise album, Swag, in an interstitial aptly titled “STANDING ON BUSINESS” that features the singer in conversation with his friend and rapper Druski. Or rather: Mostly Druski roasts Bieber for his pronunciation of “business” — pronounced so seriously as to render it silly. “I think that’s why” the paparazzi “ain’t leave right there,” Druski explains. “You can’t pronunciate every word when you doin’ that.” Bieber, to his credit, responds quietly and consistently with a variation of “Yeah, I know,” his once-stressful situation now in the hands of someone who is allowed to lampoon him for it. Druski appears a handful of times throughout Swag, most notably in a different interlude titled “THERAPY SESSION,” in which he and Bieber openly discuss the latter’s ongoing struggles.
“They don’t even understand it, like, ‘Oh my God, he’s fuckin’ losin’ his mind,’” Druski says of Bieber’s audience. “Nah, I think he’s just being a human being.” Bieber agrees, explaining that when he goes through his struggles publicly, the constant peppering as to whether he’s okay starts to weigh on him. “It starts to make me feel like I’m the one with issues and everyone else is perfect,” he adds. Bieber has expressed this sentiment before, posting an argument he had with an unnamed friend on Father’s Day where he blocked a friend for trying to intervene about his mental health.
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The interludes with Druski read much lighter — these guys are joking around about this, not unlike when Bieber shared the remix of his own meltdown. In an album already stuffed to the brim with tracks, these moments might otherwise feel unnecessary, but it feels clear that Bieber wants to — in one way or another — set the record straight. As a bit of public relations, the Druski interludes are all a little too neat, insisting that Bieber is the sane party in an otherwise insane world. It’s not the most convincing spin, but an album is not exactly a press release either. In using actual snippets from these paparazzi confrontations — like the “money money money” one from the spring — Bieber redefines moments of public humiliation into art. That’s his job. He’s done it before to great success, like the cheeky video rollouts for Purpose that accounted for but also brushed off his then-troubles with both the law and ex-girlfriend Selena Gomez. In both cases, he doesn’t absolve himself, but he’s at least temporarily able to pull focus away from his own misdeeds and struggles. Bieber’s always been good at distraction.
It’s hard to know whether Swag — full of references to Bieber’s struggles this past year — predates or was borne out of the singer’s ongoing erratic behavior. The title alone feels tongue-in-cheek. This is a guy who once referred to himself as a “swaggy adult” after turning 18. More than a decade later, he’s now reckoning with a rocky marriage, a shaky public perception, and fatherhood. Maybe this is the swag he’s boasted about all along, but more likely, Bieber maintains an ironic distance from all that. He ends the album with a track called “FORGIVENESS,” the receiving sentiment that comes after, say, one says sorry. Bieber forgives himself — he doesn’t need us to do it for him.
