Justin Timberlake said he wanted to apologize "to absolutely f'king nobody" during a performance in New York, and the cryptic rant was interpreted as aimed at Britney Spears.
And she had words in response.
The pair famously dated during the peak of their early '00s music careers, and the topic of their painful breakup resurfaced in online discussions when Spears mentioned details about their history in her 2023 memoir,The Woman in Me.
In the book, Spears opened up about difficult subjects like the time Timberlake allegedly urged her to get an abortion because he "didn't want to be a father" and how he cheated on her and then broke up with her via a text message.
She also said that Timberlake portrayed her as "a harlot who'd broken the heart of America's golden boy" in his "Cry Me a River" music video, while she was "comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood."
At Timberlake's one-night-only performance on January 31, a fan by the name of Gilberto Hora posted video footage on Instagram Stories, and the clip that went viral was of the singer's brief outburst before singing “Holy Grail,” a Jay-Z song on which he is featured.
Timberlake can be heard telling the crowd:
“I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to absolutely f'king nobody."
You can view the clip here.
In an apparent response to the non-apology, the "Til the World Ends" singer vented on Instagram and wrote:
"Someone told me someone was talking sh*t about me on the streets !!!"
"Do you want to bring it to the court or will you go home crying to your mom like you did last time ??? I’m not sorry !!!"
@britneyspears/Instagram
Britney stans heralded her comeback and pretty much said, "Work B*tch."
Days before Timberlake's weird non-apology, Spears reflected on some of the things she shared in her book and wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post:
"I wanna apologize for some of the things I wrote about in my book. If I offended any of the people I genuinely care about I am deeply sorry…"
The post featured a clip of Timberlake's medley performance with The Roots when he was a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Previously at a Las Vegas show in December, Timberlake made another apparent jab at Spears when he said, "No disrespect," before singing the very song widely believed to be a Britney diss track, "Cry Me a River."
Timberlake, who has been married since 2012 to actor Jessica Biel, with whom they're raising two sons, has not publicly disclosed that "Cry Me a River" was about his breakup with Spears.
He did admit in his 2018 memoir, Hindsight: & All the Things I Can't See in Front of Me, that he's "been scorned" and stated that he wrote "Cry Me a River" in two hours, adding, "I didn't plan on writing it."
Jane Rosenberg
Jane Rosenberg
@arianagrande/Instagram
@arianagrande/Instagram