Ginuwine finally weighs in on infamous encounter with Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears
Ginuwine shares his perspective on a Justin Timberlake anecdote from Britney Spears' memoir The Woman In Me
Aux News Justin Timberlake
In October, many of us were haunted by Michelle Williams’ multi-layered line delivery as the audiobook narrator of Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman In Me. In one notable clip, Williams, from Spears’ perspective, did an impression of Justin Timberlake parroting African American Vernacular English when the couple encountered singer Ginuwine on the street. According to Spears, Timberlake approached him “all excited and said so loud, ‘Oh yeah, fo shiz, fo shiz! Ginuwiiiiine! What’s up, homie?”
It begs the question—well, it begs a few questions, but here’s one of them: What is up with Ginuwine? Currently, he’s coming off of an appearance on The Masked Singer, and he’s being made to answer for Timberlake’s Blaccent. “Nah, I don’t remember that,” Ginuwine laughed in response to Billboard’s inquiry. “I would have probably looked at him very weird if he did that like she said. I just don’t remember that, but I remember him [Timberlake] being a cool dude and me kicking it down there in Florida with [*NSYNC’s] producer at one time.”
To be clear, not only does Ginuwine not remember this encounter, but it seems he doubts Spears’ account of the situation altogether. “If Justin would’ve did something like that, I probably would’ve looked at him like, ‘Why are you acting like that?’” He reiterated in an interview with People. “If he did that, that would be something that I would remember. That would’ve definitely stuck out. So nah, I don’t remember that happening.”
What to believe? Ginuwine sounds pretty confident that it didn’t go down like Spears says it did, but there’s a chance a random encounter on the street more than 20 years ago wouldn’t have made a lasting impression. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle, that Timberlake was putting on a bit of AAVE, but not as pronounced as the memoir made it seem. Memory is tricky.
This also doesn’t mean Spears is exactly wrong about the way she characterizes Timberlake in general—from a pop culture standpoint, he’s long been known to associate himself with hip hop and R&B. “His band *NSYNC was what people back then called ‘so pimp,’” Spears wrote in her book (via Marie Claire). “They were white boys, but they loved hip-hop. To me, that’s what separated them from the Backstreet Boys—who seemed very consciously to position themselves as a white group. *NSYNC hung out with Black artists.” As they say: fo shiz.
31 Comments
“but there’s a chance a random encounter on the street more than 20 years ago wouldn’t have made a lasting impression.”
Jesus fucking Christ, did you even read what you copied and pasted?
He’s LITERALLY saying it didn’t leave a lasting impression because it was so normal and that it WOULD HAVE left a lasting impression if one of the biggest pop stars in the world spoke to him with a “blaccent”.
For Christ’s fucking sake, I know you don’t give a shit about your job, but come ON?
Maybe he ran into Timberlake and Spears on the streets of his hometown of Pawnee and then got too drunk at the Snake hole Lounge to remember any of it.
Well he is part of the Meagle family, and the Meagles are cold people.
Ask his cousin, she works for the local government and drives a Mercedes.
She knows how to treat her self!
Clothes, fragrances, massages, mimosas, fine leather goods.
We have footage of the event:
That dastardly Janet Snakehole stole his memories!
Finally! At long last, Ginuwine weighs in on the subject everyone is talking about!!
He wouldn’t lie, would he?
I forgot about the line about him so I just thought it was a “Who the fuck cares what Ja Rule thinks about 9/11″ situation.
I don’t think I ever put much thought into the unique spelling of Ginuwine’s name before, but… is it supposed to be like Gin + Wine?
He’s confused and asking Gin a question: U Wine? No? Oh. You’re Gin? Alright. Where’s your friend, Tonic?
I’m now furious that Ginuwine and the band Tonic never toured together as Gin + Tonic. Furious, I say!
I genuinely have no idea.
His first name is Elgin
It’s the word “genuine” with the i pronounced long.
Orson Welles speaking for Gin + Wine. It’ll knock you on your keester, and it’s sensibly priced at $8.95 a gallon.
Haha good timing. I don’t know why, but Welles’ Paul Masson wine commercial showed up in my Youtube feed today.
Nail Timberlake for misogyny, lying, cowardice, and disrespecting Prince (or not, sometimes Prince had it coming and there’s a whole aside there regarding his narcissism and possible abuse). All that’s fair. But as someone who grew up black in the South, I’m just going to say…Timberlake’s from Memphis, where half my family are from. Spears grew up in Louisiana at a time when the Grand Wizard of the KKK got a third of the votes for governor.It may just be that her experience of a white dude interacting comfortably with a black man was colored by how she perceived race at the time. Although, on that note, she’s recently been on social media acting a fool around and starting spontaneous chaos with random black men she doesn’t know — including propositioning Kanye West in public.Britney Spears doesn’t have to be a perfect victim to have been a victim, nor does her victimization make her retroactively perfect.
Not to be all “but actually,” but…well, actually he grew up in a Memphis suburb, so I wouldn’t assume that just because he’s Memphis adjacent that he knows how to relate to Black people that is anything other than fake, imitative, and weird. I also don’t think Ginuwine’s comments mean her report was inaccurate. If Ginuwine was made to listen to the narration of the comments, Justin definitely didn’t sound like that. Williams read it weird. It probably sounded much less crazy at the time, while still being inauthentic and blaccenty without be so much so that it stuck out in Ginuwine’s memory. We’ve seen with our own eyes that Justin code switches depending on what kind of audience he’s courting.All that said, nothing needs to be made of this episode. If you assume it’s 100% true or if you assume it’s 100% false it doesn’t change what everyone already knows about him. His riding on the coattails of Black culture is well established and problematic but far from the most problematic things he’s done.
Spears isn’t exactly a trusted source on, well, pretty much anything at this point (or ever?).
I think they’re probably both right. This is how I see it happening:JT [sees Ginuwine, speaks to Britney and their crew, in AAVE]: Oh yeah, fo shiz, fo shiz! Ginuwiiiiine!JT [once he’s up close, actually face to face with Ginuwine, normal voice]: What’s up, homie?
This sounds similar to how Victor Wembanyama security viciously attacked her. She’s an idiot.
I say “homies” sometimes. Am I not supposed to?
It depends. Are you a Home Skillet?
When I’m on the road I’m an Away Skillet.
Well, this pretty much backfired. Ginuwine wasn’t at all offended by the interaction he had with Timberlake, so all that remains of this story is Britney fabricating details of her memoir, and Michelle Williams going out of her way to do the most cartoonishly racist “blaccent” she could possibly muster up. They’re the only ones that come off badly in this!
And the people who have an opinion on this are the real losers.
Rappers have to deal with no end of nonsense from people when they’re in public. He probably had a thousand other things on his mind and didn’t think much of a thirsty white boy calling his name. Speare’s story is too detailed to be a lie, but it won’t surprise me to see ‘homies’ backing each other’s stories. Anyone who has half a chance to say “crazy white bitch” these days will take it.
Honest question: do people still say “wigger” or has that fallen by the wayside?