Britney Spears Describes Justin Timberlake's Embarrassing Ginuwine Encounter: "Fo Shiz, Fo Shiz"

She says all of the *NSYNC members "tried too hard to fit in" to Black culture

BY Ben OkazawaPublished Oct 25, 2023

Britney Spears's new memoir The Woman in Me was bound to spill some juicy secrets — plenty of which revolve around her rollercoaster relationship with fellow pop star Justin Timberlake.

Now, it's not necessarily breaking news that Timberlake tried a bit too hard to fit in to Black culture, but hearing details of his embarrassing behaviour, as narrated by Michelle Williams, is fun in itself. 

In a now-viral clip from the audiobook, Spears recounts a time when she and Timberlake ran into R&B singer Ginuwine while in New York, and Timberlake apparently put on an appalling Blaccent — imitated to its fullest by Williams. 

"Sometimes, I thought [*NSYNC] tried too hard to fit in. One day, J and I were in New York going to parts of town I had never been to before. Walking our way was a guy with a huge blinged-out medallion. He was flanked by two giant security guards. J got all excited and said so loud, 'Oh yeah, fo shiz fo shiz, Ginuwine! What's up homie?'"
 
 
"His band *NYSNC was what people back then called, 'so pimp,'" she wrote of the recently-reunited boy band. "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."

Although Spears had initially intended to narrate the audiobook herself, she later recanted, saying that reliving some of the more painful moments of her past was too much, and that she'd hand the reins to Williams instead. 

Even if people wanted to hear Spears's voice in the audiobook, there are at least a few X (formerly Twitter) users who are more than happy with Williams' narration. 

"I never knew I needed Michelle Williams to say 'fo shiz' and yet here we are," commented one. 

"*Sets Michelle Williams saying for shiz for shiz as permanent ringtone,*" wrote another.

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