Does JC Chasez Have Thug Appeal? Let’s Take A Look.
Boyband icon or certified thug? Or both? Examining JC’s self-proclaimed thug appeal on Blaque’s 1999 hit “Bring It All To Me.”
On October 11, 1999, the R&B trio, Blaque, released an absolute banger that made its way to number five on the Billboard Top 100’s. I’m talking about the classic “Bring It All To Me.” The song's remix technically featured *NSYNC, but JC Chasez was the one who did all the work (literally, the other four weren’t in the song).
Although Blaque’s Brandi D revealed that Justin Timberlake was initially supposed to sing the song’s second verse, a scheduling conflict prevented him from doing so. Instead, JC came through the studio and absolutely crushed it. But recently, as I was listening to this song, I couldn’t help but notice this line sung by then-23-year-old JC Chasez:
Are you feeling my Timbs, my baggy jeans?
My thug appeal?
Do you like it when a man can keep it real?
Did JC Chasez just ask all three members of the R&B sensation Blaque if they enjoy his thug appeal? The line was so shocking that the producer literally paused the track for a second to process what he had just heard. Did Shamari, Brandi, and Natina like that question? I mean, they had to because they kept singing together, right?
Timbs and baggy jeans were pretty popular in 1999, so I won’t put too much thought into those lines. But as the former Mousekateer and 20% of the supergroup *NSYNC, I have to know; in 1999, did JC Chasez have thug appeal, and if so, how much thug appeal did he possess? For the sake of keeping it real, we need to find out.
The definition of a thug.
Google defines “thug” as:
A violent, aggressive person, especially one who is a criminal.
A member of a group or organization of robbers and assassins in India who waylaid and strangled their victims, usually travelers, and stole their belongings. They were suppressed by the British in the 1830s.
When I think of JC Chasez, I don’t initially think of criminal activity but let’s break this down slightly.
Is JC Chasez violent?
In *NSYNC’s self-titled debut, during the song “Crazy For You,” JC sings:
Wherever I go, whatever I do,
Whenever my heart is crying out for you
Wherever I go, whatever I do
I’m crazy for you
That’s not violent, but it’s a bit of a red flag. That coupled with the fact that during the same album, JC refers to himself as crazy again, this time on “Thinking of You (I Drive Myself Crazy).” To make matters worse, during the music video, things got so bad for the group that they all ended up being placed in a psychiatric ward, though JC seemed to need more help than his friends after physically assaulting his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend live on television.
Whether JC was a danger to himself or others remains to be seen, but watching him being held down by hospital staff leads me to believe that following his appearance on a Jerry Springer style talk show, professional healthcare workers deemed him to be a risk to those around him. So, in conclusion, yes, JC may have been a little violent. At the very least, he had violent tendencies.
Is JC Chasez aggressive?
JC doesn’t appear to be an aggressive man. In fact, everything I’ve read about him in recent years makes me think he is a very nice and kind man. But again, we’re talking about twenty-plus years ago. Was JC Chasez an aggressive man in 1999? Let’s look at the lyrics.
According to Wikipedia, *NSYNC’s “No Strings Attached” was recorded between February 1999 and January 2000, so even though the album was released five months after “Bring It All To Me” hit the radio, all of the songs from their chart-topping album were recorded during the same time period in question, meaning they’re all admissible in this argument, including their lead single and smash hit, “Bye Bye Bye.”
“Bye Bye Bye” is not only the lead single for the album, but it’s the first track, so when you beat out 200 13-year-old girls to pick up this CD from Sam Goody, you hopped into your mom's car, and the first words you heard on the entire album were:
I’m doing this tonight
You’re probably gonna start a fight
Whoa! In a song about breaking up with your girlfriend, who clearly doesn’t want to be broken up with, you immediately start the conversation with “I’m doing this tonight” and follow it up with “You’re probably gonna start a fight?” JC didn’t hold back, which, if we’re being honest, is kind of aggressive. She may have started the fight, but JC was certainly involved in it, no doubt.
The gentle method of that conversation would look like, “Hey babe, I think we should sit down and talk.” The passive-aggressive method is, “Hey, look, I think we both know why we’re here, right?” JC walked into the living room like the Kool-aid man and said, “THIS BREAK UP IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!”
That’s a cold man.
Following his break up on “Bye Bye Bye,” he immediately transitions into everybody’s favorite end-of-April song in “It’s Gonna Be Me.” On its own, no big deal, but when I look at the following lyrics, I’ve got a few questions:
You’ve got no choice, babe
But to move on, and you know
There ain’t no time to waste
You’re just too blind (Too blind), to see
But in the end, you know it’s gonna be me
You can’t deny
So just tell me why
You’ve got no choice? There ain’t no time to waste? Did my man just call this woman blind?! My goodness, we’re in bullying territory here.
If you opened up a Hallmark card and JC’s verse from “It’s Gonna Be Me” was on the inside, you might be inclined to file a restraining order against the sender. And when the officer asks for a reason why you’re filing a police report, some part of your response will likely be, “it was just very aggressive.”
Is JC Chasez a criminal?
No, he is not, but his rise to fame was in part due to Lou Pearlman, the man who would eventually be sentenced to prison on charges of conspiracy, money laundering, and making false statements to police. Lou Pearlman cheated *NSYNC, his other group — The Backstreet Boys, and many other musical acts out of millions of dollars in revenue. Does hanging around a criminal make JC a criminal? I can’t say it does, especially when that criminal is stealing from him. With this important information, I don’t feel confident calling JC Chasez a criminal.
Has JC Chasez ever committed crimes in India?
I’ve found no evidence of JC Chasez even visiting India, let alone committing crimes in that country.
Based on the technical definition…
JC Chasez may have been a little violent. In 1999 he certainly was aggressive, at least in his lyrics and videos. However, I don’t have evidence to support him leading a criminal lifestyle either here or abroad, outside of a few stolen hearts, of course. So does JC Chazes have thug appeal? I don’t know, we need to go deeper.
So far, we’ve focused on the technical and negative aspects of thug appeal, but judging by the confidence with which he asked the question, I’m inclined to believe that JC was portraying his alleged thug appeal positively. In Trick Daddy’s 2001 hit, “I’m a Thug,” Mr. Daddy says:
Could it be my baggy jeans
Or my gold teeth
That make me different from ya’ll?
This song came out in March of 2001, roughly 18 months after Blaque’s “Bring It All To Me” was released. Did JC Chasez inspire Trick Daddy to write that line about the baggy jeans? It’s possible. 1999–2001 JC Chazes was a very influential man. And influencing a song called “I’m a Thug,” which was featured on the album “Thugs Are Us,” would indeed lend its credence to his thug appeal.
Or we could look at a pre-”In Da Club” 50 Cent’s 1999 track “Thug Love,” a song that is very hard to find and featured Blaque’s Columbia Records labelmates Destiny’s Child, where an 18-year-old Beyonce sang:
A thug’s what I want
A thug’s what I need
Even though my friends don’t seem to see
That he lace me with money
He knows when I want it
And I’m never gonna leave my baby
My thugged out no good baby
Suppose Beyonce tells you a thug is what she wants and a thug is what she needs. In that case, I could imagine even the most angelic-voiced white man in the world would accentuate his alleged thug appeal like one might spruce up their resume to impress a few beautiful ladies who began a conversation with, “There you are, looking at fine as can be.”
So does JC Chasez have thug appeal?
After conducting my research, watching hours of *NSYNC music videos, and combing through dozens of articles containing supporting data, I believe that JC Chasez, 1/5th of the band *NSYNC, does not meet the minimum criteria that would grant him thug appeal.
While I don’t believe he purposely lied to the wonderful women of Blaque, I do believe that based on Beyonce’s definition of “thug,” the then 23-year-old JC, being the phenomenal person he is, simply wanted to believe that he had thug appeal. After his appearance alongside Ryan Gosling, Justin Timberlake, and Dale Godboldo on the cover of Jodeci’s “Cry For You,” I can understand where he was coming from. My man had a little swagger for sure. But swagger and thug appeal are not interchangeable.
In reality, I think JC got a little flustered on the track as the one man in a room full of beautiful Black women and overzealously said something that he probably wishes he could take back. I’m not going to fault him for that. We’ve all been there.