Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi Burruss backed ex-NSYNC member Justin Timberlake over Brittney Spears’ blaccent claims from her memoir.
Page Six’s Evan Real interviewed the reality hotshot at the 2023 BravoCon on Friday, Nov. 3, and asked for her take on Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me, particularly the “Toxic” singer’s claims that the ’90s boy band icon used to feign a blaccent.
“I thought [Justin’s blaccent] was funny,” Burruss commented. “But I don’t want anybody to down Justin because you gotta remember the times that we were going through at the time. That era of pop and R&B…it was like a lot of boy bands that did Urban music, urban routines and dancing—the whole image. That was in at the time, and nobody was passing judgment.”
“Right now, I feel like everything that we used to do back in the day, people are getting canceled for now. Right? At that time, nobody knew that it was a problem,” Burruss resumed. “So, I just feel like that was young Justin. Leave him alone, y’all. ’Cause he’s honestly…he was a really, really good guy.”
The 47-year-old mogul claimed working with NSYNC was one of the best experiences she had in working with groups because of how cooperative they were and didn’t give any pushback.
“I work with a lot of people, but when I worked with NSYNC, they came in, they didn’t have any egos, they sung their parts, they did what I said…they just came in, they were ready to work. We laughed and joked and had a good time.”
The Xscape member asked fans to give Timberlake some “grace.”
It’s no surprise that Burruss defended Timberlake, considering she wrote “It Makes Me Ill,” one of the group’s biggest hits, for the band’s sophomore album, No Strings Attached.
In 2016, Burruss posted a “throwback Thursday” photo of her in the studio with the band, where they recorded the track.
“#TBT of when I was in the studio working with #nsync on their #NoStringsAttached album. I wrote #MakesMeIll. That was a great session! Those guys were fun to work with,” the caption read.
“‘Oh, yeah, fo’ Shizz, fo’ Shizz, Ginuwine. What’s up, homie?’” — Justin Timberlake to Ginuwine.
Per a MadameNoire report, Spears dropped her memoir The Woman in Me on Oct. 24, where she spilled all the tea concealed from the public for years. She covered many topics surrounding her life that spanned from her family to romance, with Dawson’s Creek actress Michelle Williams narrating the audiobook.
In track 14, the 41-year-old popstar recalled Timberlake taking her to some part of New York and running into Ginuwine.
“J got all excited and said so loud, ‘Oh yeah, fo’ Shizz, fo’ Shizz, Ginuwine. What’s up, homie?’”
Spears insinuated that NSYNC tried “too hard” to distinguish themselves from other ’90s boy bands by hanging around Black artists.
“His band, NSYNC, is what people back then called ‘so pimp,’” she said. “They were white boys, but they loved hip-hop. To me, that’s what separated them from the Backstreet Boys, who seemed very [conscious] to position themselves as a white group. NSYNC hung out with Black artists. Sometimes, I thought they tried too hard to fit in.”
