Kill the radio star.

I am fascinated by the new Justin Timberlake single. Is this part and parcel of the musical mainstreaming of BDSM that began with Madonna in fetish gear or is it more of a Britney "Slave for U"-style wink-wink appropriation? I mean:

You see these shackles baby I'm your slave
I'll let you whip me if I misbehave

Hadley Arkes would have a cow.

Additionally: Timberlake, unlike Spears, has a not-terrible voice. Overprocessed vocals to hide a bad performance I can understand. But why filter a decent voice such that it's not differentiable from an awful one? Would this song get airplay if it sounded exactly the same but was by a nobody? Of course not. So why this nonsense?