Rock Your Body

In 2002, Justin Timberlake was putting together his debut solo album, Justified, when Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo of the Neptunes handed him a track that had already been turned down once. The song, "Rock Your Body", had originally been offered to Michael Jackson for his tenth studio album, Invincible. Jackson rejected it along with several other Neptunes productions, and the material was passed on to Timberlake instead.

The track was recorded at Master Sound Recording Studios and Windmark Recording in Virginia Beach, with Andrew Coleman as recording engineer and Serban Ghenea handling the mix. Williams and Hugo delivered all the instrumentation themselves, while Vanessa Marquez, signed to the Neptunes' Star Trak label, recorded her additional vocals at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. The finished song was an uptempo disco groove with soul inflections, drawing on influences from both Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, and Timberlake sang much of it in falsetto. Jive Records released it on March 17, 2003, as the third single from Justified.

Critics received it warmly, with several reviewers naming it a stand-out from the album. Commercially it fared well, topping the Australian Singles Chart, reaching number two in the United Kingdom, and peaking at number five on the US Billboard Hot 100. Francis Lawrence directed the music video, filmed at Ren-Mar Studios, which placed Timberlake and his dancers inside a cube lit by multicolored lights. Timberlake also performed the song at the 2004 Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show alongside Janet Jackson, a performance that became highly controversial.