Justin Bieber was dismissed as an industry puppet – as he turns 30, does he have anything left to prove?

‘Started playing drums, when I was only two,’ Justin Bieber declared in his Otis Redding freestyle rap in 2011.

At that time, he was 18 years old and had emerged as a musician just three years earlier, but there wasn’t a person in the world who didn’t know his name.

And what he says is true, too: Justin was playing drums, guitar, piano, and the trumpet, many before he had even reached first grade in his hometown of Stratford, Ontario.

But when he emerged as a pop act, even selling millions of records and winning top industry awards, Justin was not taken seriously as an artist. This was ‘completely out of sync’ with his gifts, so says music industry expert Bill Werde.