Justin Beiber’s Rolex Analyzed

Justin Drew Beiber has come a long way since placing second at singing competition in Stratford, Ontario. Watch-wise, JB started with Casio. As you’d expect for a performer who co-brands with artists who consider too much bling not enough, he’s acquired a selection of diamond encrusted timepieces. Let’s look at Justin Beiber’s Rolex and its friends . . .

One of these things is not like the other (a song Mr. Beiber has yet to cover). That would be the $13,600 rose gold Ballon Bleu de Cartier on the top right corner.

Dismissed by some as a “girl’s watch,” the minimalist timepiece is the literal embodiment of the non-threatening masculinity that helped propel Mr. Beiber to the top of the charts.

Also notice that there are just two brands here: Justin Beiber’s Rolex and his Cartier. None of these watches (even the sparkling Day-Date) are ostentatious in either a Richard Mille death-by-techno or  Jacob & Company bejeweled kinda way.

If there’s any doubt on Mr. Beiber’s preference for subtle bling [sic], here’s the gold Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Mr. B. bought himself for his most recent wedding. No complications, no diamonds.

If JB was a “real” watch guy he would rock the coveted steel RO. And while his fellow pop stars know an Audemars Piguet when they see one, JB’s gold Oak is still a watch that flies under the over-the-top radar.

There’s no getting around it: even JB’s most ghetto fabulous watches reveal a deeply conservative dude. A fact that no amount of tattoos or drunken driving, resisting arrest and other bad boy behavior can change.

Raised by his mother in low-income housing, his family blending like JuiceLand, Justin spent his grade and high school education in Catholic schools. I don’t think he learned the value of chastity or poverty, but I reckon some of the schools’ humility training found fertile ground.

Either that or his “go quietly and go home” approach to watches is a Canadian thing. Here’s the theory behind that possibility [via vox.com]:

Canadians have cultivated an identity of boringness as an alternative to the two other cultures that loom so large for them: the British, whose empire they were a part of until relatively recently, and the noisy Americans to the south. “Canadian boringness isn’t intrinsic: it’s something we work at, cherish and reward,” Heer writes.

Because both of those cultural forces exert such power in Canada, cultivated boringness is another way of saying, “We are not British and we are not American.”

Which brings us to his POPSTAR Rolex . . .

It’s a bizarre video. After Drake says his songs don’t get big without a “Bieber face,” caucasian Justin stands in for his black fellow Canadian, lip-syncing (except for the N-word, of course) in Louis Vuitton pants and an ‘80s-glam shearling coat.

“Two, four, six, eight watches, factory, so they appreciate,” Bieber raps, pointing a finger gun directly at the watch. Drake has a rather simplistic view of avoiding watch depreciation, but anyway, the timepiece on Justin’s wrist gets star treatment.

I have a hard time believing that the person responsible for the video’s “props” – which includes two pimped-out Lambos and a brace of high-end Mercedes – chose the $9650 Rolex Datejust 41 in Oystersteel and white gold on an Oystersteel bracelet for the shoot. Nor do I think Rolex paid for product placement.

Given JB’s well established love of Rollies, it had to be his choice. As such, it reaffirms in no uncertain terms that Justin is that hugely talented but shy, humble and kind soul that the world fell in love with as he was going through puberty.

Put another way, you can take the boy out of Canada, but you can’t take Canada out of the boy.