Ginuwine finally weighs in on infamous encounter with Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears

In October, many of us were haunted by Michelle Williams’ multi-layered line delivery as the audiobook narrator of Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman In Me. In one notable clip, Williams, from Spears’ perspective, did an impression of Justin Timberlake parroting African American Vernacular English when the couple encountered singer Ginuwine on the street. According to Spears, Timberlake approached him “all excited and said so loud, ‘Oh yeah, fo shiz, fo shiz! Ginuwiiiiine! What’s up, homie?”

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It begs the question—well, it begs a few questions, but here’s one of them: What is up with Ginuwine? Currently, he’s coming off of an appearance on The Masked Singer, and he’s being made to answer for Timberlake’s Blaccent. “Nah, I don’t remember that,” Ginuwine laughed in response to Billboard’s inquiry. “I would have probably looked at him very weird if he did that like she said. I just don’t remember that, but I remember him [Timberlake] being a cool dude and me kicking it down there in Florida with [*NSYNC’s] producer at one time.”

To be clear, not only does Ginuwine not remember this encounter, but it seems he doubts Spears’ account of the situation altogether. “If Justin would’ve did something like that, I probably would’ve looked at him like, ‘Why are you acting like that?’” He reiterated in an interview with People. “If he did that, that would be something that I would remember. That would’ve definitely stuck out. So nah, I don’t remember that happening.”

What to believe? Ginuwine sounds pretty confident that it didn’t go down like Spears says it did, but there’s a chance a random encounter on the street more than 20 years ago wouldn’t have made a lasting impression. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle, that Timberlake was putting on a bit of AAVE, but not as pronounced as the memoir made it seem. Memory is tricky.

This also doesn’t mean Spears is exactly wrong about the way she characterizes Timberlake in general—from a pop culture standpoint, he’s long been known to associate himself with hip hop and R&B. “His band *NSYNC was what people back then called ‘so pimp,’” Spears wrote in her book (via Marie Claire). “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. *NSYNC hung out with Black artists.” As they say: fo shiz.