Justin Timberlake tells crowd he means ‘no disrespect’ before performing song allegedly about Britney Spears

Justin Timberlake told a crowd he means 'no disrespect' before performing a song allegedly about Britney Spears.

Timberlake took to the stage at Fontainebleau in Las Vegas earlier this week (13 December) where he performed his 2002 smash-hit 'Cry Me a River'.

Timberlake released the song mere months after he and Spears parted ways in their highly publicized breakup, and casted an uncanny lookalike in the music video for the track.

The lyrics seem to point to some wrongdoings in the relationship, reading: "You don't have to say, what you did / I already know, I found out from him.

"Now there's just no chance / For you and me / There'll never be / And don't it make you sad about it?"

However, before he started belting out the lyrics, the NSYNC star reportedly offered somewhat of a disclaimer which appears to be a reference to his highly-publicised breakup with Spears.

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The 42-year-old told the crowd 'no disrespect', according to several outlets.

Spears' highly-anticipated memoir, The Woman in Me, hit the shelves back in October and gave fans all over the chance to find out some more about two decades of little-known details about the 41-year-old pop icon's life.

In the book, Spears candidly discusses a whole bunch of things, including her relationship with Timberlake, the real reason she shaved her head back in 2007 and the conservatorship - which was ended in 2021.

For years now, people speculated that the ‘Gimme More’ singer cheated on her former boyfriend, who she dated between 1999 and 2002 - which only increased following the release of 'Cry Me a River'.

As it turns out, that's not the full picture.

While Spears admits she did cheat on Timberlake at one point, she claims he was also unfaithful to her on 'several' occasions.

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"There were a couple of times during our relationship when I knew Justin had cheated on me," she says in the book.

"Especially because I was so infatuated and so in love, I let it go, even though the tabloids seemed determined to rub my face in it.

"When NSYNC went to London in 2000, photographers caught him with one of the girls from All Saints in a car. But I never said anything. At the time we'd only been together for a year.

"Another time, we were in Vegas, and one of my dancers who'd been hanging out with him told me he'd gesture toward a girl and said, 'Yeah, man, I hit that last night.'

"I don't want to say who he was talking about because she's actually very popular and she's married with kids now. I don't want her to feel bad."

Britney added: "There were rumours about him with various dancers and groupies. I let it all go, but clearly, he'd slept around. It was one of those things where you know but you just don't say anything."