14 DAY TRIAL // Since before Justin Bieber's latest album, “Believe,” came out, his people have been working hard to stress how much he's grown and how he is a man now, no longer a teen heartthrob. The August issue of Rolling Stone also falls in this category.
The preview issue is now available online: the cover and a few quotes pulled from the feature piece.
It's clear from the cover that camp Bieber is determined to paint him in a different light from before, to sell him as a man and no longer a boy.
“Hot, ready, legal,” reads a caption under his name.
In the interview, Justin too notes how he's more grown up today because he believes he no longer carries himself as a boy.
“I feel like I carry myself in a more manly way. I don’t carry myself as a boy,” the pop star says of being more mature.
Another fragment of the interview aims to show just how much The Biebs hates the paparazzi, who managed to track him down even on a private golf course.
Quite upset that he's been tracked down, Justin has some fun by hitting them with golf balls and then leaves the premises with his entire crew, warning a member of the staff that “we’ll probably never play here again.”
Another interesting bit released with the preview is a quote from Justin's manager, Scooter Braun, who says he doesn't believe Justin's longterm (by showbiz standards) romance with Selena Gomez will be hurting his image as a player.
“Personally, I think that’s all a bunch of bull[expletive]. Yes, there’s gonna be some girls that if they see him with a girlfriend, it kills the dream – but there’s also gonna be girls that see him with a girlfriend, hear about the romantic things he does and want him even more,” Braun says.
Another funny thing about the interview, which is already being ridiculed online even though it's not out in full yet, is the fact that Rolling Stone seems to have recycled the “hot, ready, legal” line from a 2004 cover with Lindsay Lohan, who also turned 18 then.
As Gawker so brilliantly puts it, “we all know how that ended up.”