Justin Timberlake appeared to address the backlash against him from his ex Britney Spears’ memoir when he performed at the opening night of the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas, Nevada on Wednesday, December 13. Before JT went into his hit “Cry Me a River,” he had a brief introduction, which was a seeming reference to the sections of the memoir about Britney’s reaction to the song.
As the intro to the song played, Justin walked to the edge of the stage, and he simply said, “No disrespect.” Before launching into the song proper, he did perform a snippet of Jay-Z’s 2013 song “Holy Grail,” which he was featured on. The segment Justin sang was an interpolation of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with slightly different lyrics. “Ain’t we all just entertainers? I feel stupid and contagious. Yeah, we all just entertainers,” he sang.
@chynnatok @Justin Timberlake saying “no disrespect” before singing Cry me a river last night 😂😭😭
When Britney’s memoir The Woman in Me hit bookshelves in October, many fans were interested to see what she’d say about her romance with Justin in the early aughts. The former NSYNC singer had released “Cry Me a River” shortly after the pair’s split, and in the book, Britney revealed how hurt she was by the song and its music video.
While breaking down the music video’s plot, the “Piece of Me” popstar described it as “a woman who looks like me cheats on him and he wanders around sad in the rain.” She said that she wasn’t a fan, because she was portrayed as a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy.”
After the book was released, Justin disabled his Instagram comments after getting tons of backlash from Britney’s fans. While Justin has mostly kept mum on the memoir, he did seem to address his ex’s comments about the Justified track, while performing at comedian Dave Chappelle’s 50th birthday party in August, before the book was released. “They told me not to do this song no more,” he said on stage. “F**k that!”