![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/cfcfcab0a59f18b6d8c61bcc1a548779de-kevinfederline.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Name one of his rap songs \u2013 I dare you.
\n Photo: Michael Tran\/FilmMagic\n <\/p>\n
Kevin Federline has emerged from the shadows of his self-imposed exile to release You Thought You Knew<\/a>, his arguably overdue response to the past several years of Britney Spears\u2013related media and speculation.<\/a> Though Federline and Spears were married for only a little more than two years, the two share sons together, and he remains her most notorious ex, best known as a tabloid fixture alongside her. With his children (not only the ones with Spears) now older and more time on his plate, Federline wants to clear his name no matter what. In You Thought You Knew, he finally gives us his side of the story, reigniting a number of conflicts between him and Spears<\/a> in the process.<\/p>\n Federline asserts over and over again that everything he\u2019s done in his life is for the benefit of his family. Yes, he\u2019s been led astray by fame, and yes, he\u2019s played the villain. But as he says in the introduction, he wanted to hold off until his kids could handle it all. \u201cMy kids were still young, still finding their way through a world that was already heavy on their shoulders. I didn\u2019t want to make it heavier. I didn\u2019t want to stir shit up when they were the ones who\u2019d feel it most. So I waited,\u201d he writes. Federline admits he sat in silence while \u201ceveryone else\u201d \u2014 the media, blogs, strangers, exes \u2014 told his story on his behalf. \u201cI don\u2019t want them growing up feeling like they have to explain who their father is,\u201d he says of his kids. \u201cI don\u2019t want them defending shit they never lived.\u201d Though Federline has six children across three relationships, he seems to mostly be speaking to and about his sons Preston and Jayden, whom he shares with ex-wife Britney Spears.<\/p>\n Cast your mind back, if you can, to 2005: What is Kevin Federline\u2019s \u201cjob\u201d? What does he do? Federline got his start in the entertainment industry as a backup dancer, a career he describes as \u201cnot just a passion, but a way out.\u201d In fact, the way Federline describes dance, the art form never seemed like a passion at all but a vehicle through which he could achieve fame. All of his memories of his greatest times dancing focus on crossing paths with celebrities \u2014 Michael Jackson, for instance \u2014 or being onstage under the lights. In the aftermath of his relationship with Spears, Federline turned to rap. \u201cMeanwhile, I was pouring myself into my music \u2014 into that album,\u201d he says of his universally panned 2006 album, Playing with Fire. \u201cThat was something just for me. A piece of me I could finally claim. I believed in it. I needed it.\u201d Federline never really makes it seem like he does need it so much as the album is something to do. Same with his stints on reality TV and wrestling. He writes at one point in the book that focusing on his family got in the way of building his brand, but as his kids grow, it becomes increasingly clear that Federline\u2019s brand may be in crisis no matter what.<\/p>\n Some of the more compelling details of You Thought You Knew pertain to Federline\u2019s separation agreement with Spears. As he describes it, \u201cWhen Britney and I divorced, the court awarded me $20,000 a month in child support. At the same time, I was receiving alimony, another $20,000 a month, for half the duration of our marriage. People hear figures like that and think you\u2019re financially set.\u201d He notes that \u201cjust maintaining a home and a lifestyle that matched what the boys were used to with their mother easily ran well over $40,000 a month. Rent, security, a full-time nanny, transportation, and all the other day-to-day needs of raising two kids in L.A., as well as my two children \u2014 it added up fast. That money was gone almost as soon as it came in.\u201d Part of why Federline became such a staple doing club appearances and his 2007 Super Bowl commercial<\/a> was to pay for a lifestyle he was only ever briefly acquainted with. He might be coasting on Spears\u2019s name, but he\u2019s definitely not coasting on her money.<\/p>\n Any time Federline gets remotely close to a famous person, he makes sure you know about it. He had a fated run-in with Snoop Dogg not long after his album came out that reads like a middle-school fantasy of hanging out with a rapper. \u201cNot long after Snoop started his set, he spotted me, cut the music, and said, \u2018Fatherhood! My man K-Fizzle gotta be one of the biggest pimps in the world.\u2019 I walked over to Snoop, pulled a fat blunt out of my pocket, and handed it to him. He lit it right there and got back on the mic: \u2018Ooooweee! Fatherhood brought the fire! This that real Cali OG shit!\u2019\u201d Federline says. Once he and Spears separated, he made most of his money from his short-term reality stints and his small arcs in the WWE back in 2007. \u201cThe plan was simple: I\u2019d come out, play the villain, talk some trash, and Cena would take me down. They told me they\u2019d use my single, \u2018America\u2019s Most Hated,\u2019 as my theme song. I\u2019d come out to the music, rile up the crowd, and Cena would interrupt and set me straight,\u201d he explains. Everyone loved this, so Federline claims \u2014 even Shaquille O\u2019Neal and his family. \u201cShaq said, \u2018We\u2019re here to watch Cena kick your ass.\u2019 We both laughed, all in good fun.\u201d There\u2019s one celebrity, however, Federline noticeably doesn\u2019t name. One time, he catches Spears doing \u201ca fat line of coke\u201d off a table with \u201can actress who was about to blow up from a role that would transform her life.\u201d Any guesses? Given this is in 2004, we\u2019re thinking Cady Heron.<\/p>\n Federline insists that any and all partying he did was mostly a result of needing to let off steam from the stresses of being a parent and at one point in time married to a pop star. Right \u2014 that\u2019s also why most people party. Still, does this sound like a kind of person who is partying just to relieve stress? \u201cWhen I didn\u2019t have the kids, I was out. Not \u2018a few drinks with the boys\u2019 kind of out. This was a full-blown bacchanal bender of a first-rate Hollywood order, a journey through the underbelly of L.A.: strippers blowing cocaine in each other\u2019s asses, guys tag-teaming chicks in my hot tub, a bordello masquerading as a porn studio masquerading as a dental office \u2026don\u2019t even get me started,\u201d he writes. Don\u2019t worry, bud, that\u2019s plenty enough as is.<\/p>\n In order to make his case for father of the year, Federline takes any and all opportunities to prove that Spears was a bad partner and a bad parent. This starts early in the book, when he details a night early on in his relationship with Spears when she allegedly snuck out their hotel room while on tour to hook up with one of her female dancers. All considered, that\u2019s a lurid but harmless allegation. Later in the memoir, however, Federline makes some pretty serious claims about Spears drinking while pregnant and breastfeeding her kids while drinking and doing drugs. (He alleges there to have been a certain hypocrisy in this, given that one of Spears\u2019s big blow-ups at him came when she caught him smoking weed in the studio.) \u201cWhat shook me the most was realizing how fragile everything was. If she could make a choice like that, breastfeeding our boys while high, what else was she capable of? And how many times had it happened before without me knowing?\u201d Federline speculates. Though it was Spears who filed for divorce against him, Federline writes that he had been considering it himself as his ex-wife spiraled out of control.<\/p>\n The most outrageous and tragic claim of the book is one that Federline says his sons told him. \u201cThey would awaken sometimes at night to find her standing silently in the doorway, watching them sleep \u2014 \u2018Oh, you\u2019re awake?\u2019 \u2014 with a knife in her hand. Then she\u2019d turn around and pad off without explanation. Creepy as fuck. Other nights, they\u2019d wake to the sound of her screaming bloody murder or smashing things in the house. All of this terrified them,\u201d he writes. Earlier in the passage, he describes a yelling incident between one of his boys and Spears with the latter behaving like \u201cJoan Crawford on crack.\u201d (What Federline\u2019s reference point is for Joan Crawford is a fun mystery \u2014 do you think he\u2019s seeing Johnny Guitar?) These are pretty weighty allegations, and Spears has twice<\/a> tweeted<\/a> about her strained relationship with her sons in the aftermath of these passages coming out (though she does not deny any of the incidents mentioned). \u201cIf you really love someone then you don\u2019t help them by humiliating them,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Name one of his rap songs \u2013 I dare you. Photo: Michael Tran\/FilmMagic Kevin Federline has emerged from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[59146,288,667,321,26324,93,3970,61,60,16178,43,9007,54093],"class_list":["post-93693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-americas-most-hated","tag-books","tag-britney-spears","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrity-memoirs","tag-entertainment","tag-explainer","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kevin-federline","tag-news","tag-vulture-homepage-lede","tag-you-thought-you-knew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}