The divorce papers, filed with the Los Angeles Supreme Court yesterday, appeared on the Web today. In them, Spears, 24, cited “irreconcilable differences” with her husband of two years and requested legal and physical custody of their two children—1-year old Sean Preston and 2-month old Jayden James. She’s hired celebrity divorce lawyer Laura Wasser, who has repped Angelina Jolie, Nick Lachey and Kiefer Sutherland in their divorces.
Many a Britney fan rejoiced. On DivorceKevin.com, where you can buy T shirts that read I MARRIED AN OUT OF WORK, BADLY DRESSED BACK UP DANCER AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS CRAPPY T-SHIRT, they’re on overdrive: BREAKING NEWS, BRITNEY LISTENS TO FANS AND DIVORCEKEVIN.COM AND FILES FOR DIVORCE!! It’s tough to say who exactly will miss Federline, except, of course, for tabloid writers, who made a living out of stalking the couple and “reporting” on Federline’s loutish behavior. (Among other things, he was said to smoke too much pot and spend too much time partying and golfing with his buddies.)
When NEWSWEEK spoke with Federline, 28, earlier this year at a Malibu studio where he was recording his debut record, he seemed to be taking all the negative media attention in stride. “They’ve already said so much s–t about me it can’t get worse,” said Federline. " ‘He hates his children, he treats his wife like dirt, he gets high all day.’ If I was that bad, you think anyone, let alone Britney, would put up with it?" And now we have our answer.
Spears’s timing couldn’t be any worse for Federline. The ex-backup dancer (Justin Timberlake, Destiny’s Child) released his “Playing With Fire” CD last week on his own presciently titled label, Reincarnate. Federline-the-rapper busts lines like “Ever since I’m married everybody follows me/Go ahead, take a look at what you can’t be.” And the lyrics are already obsolete.
Federline’s already been written off by much of the hip-hop world. To win over the pop world, he’d need at least an endorsement or two by his famous wife. She has, after all, sold 31 million records since 1999. It makes you wonder if Spears’s timing is the ultimate act of career-dashing revenge or just serendipity? Poor Federline is even being sued by ’80s new-wave star Thomas Dolby for using a sample of the Dolby’s “Blinded Me With Science” in his second single “America’s Most Hated.”
You have to wonder just where he’s going to end up, besides a courtroom, after all the dust settles. Clearly, his plans for the future will have to change. “I want to do a global tour at least once,” he told NEWSWEEK in February. “Anything after that will be hard, especially if my wife is out on tour. I’ll just stop and follow her around. I don’t care. I mean, I’ll still make music because I want to, but I’ll do it when my kids are at school. It’ll be my job to look after them.”
As for Spears, can she ever return to the role of reigning pop queen? Kevin aside, we all know too much now: how she trudges through dirty service-station bathrooms barefoot, drives with the baby on her lap and how she can’t seem to spit the gum out, even during a televised interview. Then there’s the really damning stuff. When Spears hooked up with Federline, he had a pregnant girlfriend—Shar Jackson—but Spears decided to marry him anyway. None of this information/dirt is sexy or cool, it’s just paints a sad, clueless picture. Regardless of how fit and happy she appeared to be on Letterman, the mere act of announcing “I’m Back!” doesn’t make it so.
