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"What Goes Around... Comes Around" is a song recorded by American singer Justin Timberlake for his second studio album, FutureSex/LoveSounds (2006).

Background and production
After the release of his debut solo album Justified in 2002, Timberlake thought he "lost his voice" in the sense that he did not like what he was doing. In the following years, the singer went partially idle in the music industry. His being "burnt out" partly caused him to try acting in films. In 2005, Timberlake felt inspired to record songs again. Motivated by the "sad state" of pop radio, he decided he needed to experiment with music. Reportedly, it was not until Timberlake turned to producer Timbaland "that he figured out the direction he wanted the record to take". In November 2005, Timberlake visited Timbaland's brand-new Thomas Crown Studios in Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States. Timbaland had previously collaborated with Timberlake, producing four tracks for Justified including the second single from the album, "Cry Me a River".

Once in the studio, however, the team had no clear direction for the album as there were no concepts being discussed. Aside from having "Cry Me a River" to draw from, they had no "game plan" and no working title for the new album. Timberlake thought that if he could make a record that would live up to Justified, he "would have". So he asked Timbaland if he could reproduce the likes of "Cry Me a River" by four or six times. Producer Nathaniel "Danja" Hills, a then-protégé of Timbaland, stated: "We had no direction at all other than 'Cry Me a River,' and not in the sense of mimicking the track, but in how big the song was. There was no direction for how he wanted the song to sound, because there was no direction for how he wanted [the album] to sound."

"What Goes Around... Comes Around" was written and produced by Timberlake, Timbaland and Danja. While in the studio, the three men were just "fooling around" and "freestyling". When Danja began playing a guitar riff, it caught Timberlake's attention. Timberlake started humming to the melody, and then the lyrics came. Timbaland, who was at his keyboards beside Danja, added drums to the melody. Danja commented that "everything was coming together at the same time". After coming up with the music, Timberlake never wrote down the lyrics and, in an hour, he was ready to record it. By the time Timberlake was in the vocal booth, the basic track was done, then Timbaland produced a prelude of the song. Timberlake sang the song in a couple of takes and went back line by line to fill up the gaps. During the recording sessions, Timbaland and Danja added everything else, including the basses and strings. Danja compared the process to scoring to a movie, thinking the song was like a horror flick.