Timbaland apologizes for saying Justin Timberlake should’ve ‘put a muzzle’ on Britney Spears over memoir

“Who am I to tell you what not to speak? And I was wrong for saying that.”

Timbaland is sorry for saying that Justin Timberlake should have “put a muzzle” on Britney Spears following the release of her memoir, The Woman in Me.

“I’m sorry to all the Britney fans, even to her,” he said during a TikTok livestream that has since circulated online. “I’m sorry, because muzzle was — no, you have a voice. You speak what you want to speak. Who am I to tell you what not to speak? And I was wrong for saying that.”

The music producer, 51, explained that he was looking at it “from a different lens” and hoped to make amends. “What I am is a reconcile person,” he said. “I’m not a person who takes sides; I try to combine [and say], ‘Let’s make a compromise. I see your point, do you see this point?'”

Timbaland.JASON KOERNER/GETTY IMAGES
Timbaland was holding a talk event with music producer 9th Wonder at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 29 when an audience member mentioned Spears’ memoir. “She’s going crazy, right?” he interjected as the crowd began to laugh, per footage from the event. “I wanted to call and say, ‘JT, man, you gotta put a muzzle on that girl.'”

The Grammy-winner then appeared to suggest that Spears wrote her memoir — which , in part, detailed her relationship with Timberlake as well as her 13-year conservatorship — as a way to “go viral.”

“We live in an age in social media where everybody wanna go viral,” he remarked. “I get it, ’cause that’s the way you make money: go viral. I gotta do something that gets people’s attention.”

While Timbaland made his remarks in a joking tone, the producer’s comments drew swift criticism online from Spears’ fanbase.

In her tell-all book, Spears shed light on her relationship with Timberlake, whom she dated from 1999 until 2002, and revealed that she had an abortion because he “didn’t want to be a father.”

“Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy,” Spears writes. “He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”

She also said that Timberlake’s “Cry Me A River” music video, which was released following their split and featured a woman who looked similar to her, “shattered” her.

“In the news media, I was described as a harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy,” Spears writes. “The truth: I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood. May I just say that on his explosive album and in all the press that surrounded it, Justin neglected to mention the several times he’d cheated on me?”

She continues, “There’s always more leeway in Hollywood for men than for women. And I see how men are encouraged to talk trash about women in order to become famous and powerful. But I was shattered.”