Fun fact: If you Google “famous gold-diggers,” the top results include Heather Mills, Anna Nicole Smith, Dean McDermott and Guy Ritchie.
But the #1 result is one Kevin Earl Federline — better known as Mr. Britney Spears from 2004 to 2007.
Prior to becoming the 00’s version of Yoko Ono, K-Fed’s nominal claim to fame was being a backup dancer for artists like Justin Timberlake, Pink, Michael Jackson and others.
But what we really knew him for was his ability to reproduce like a dandelion losing its fuzz on a windy day. Before he linked up with Britney, he was with Moesha actress Shar Jackson and had two kids with her in four years. Federline wasted even less time with Spears, fathering another two kids in two years.
When he decided to make his own mark on the entertainment world, he was similarly prolific, releasing two non-album singles and a debut LP from 2005 to 2006 while juggling a reality series with Spears, various acting jobs, modeling gigs, and even a WWE run where he pinned John Cena on an episode of Monday Night Raw.
Unfortunately for him, none of that changed one central fact: His music was terrible. In fact, his album was so badly reviewed it achieved infamy as the lowest rated album on Metacritic — even worse than Limp Bizkit’s career-killing album, Results May Vary.
So in a way, that’s another #1 under his belt.
The best way to have success as a new artist is to release a killer single from your debut album.
Britney Spears’ “… Baby One More Time” was one of the best such singles— a star-making and era-defining song that also served as a statement of intent from the artist.
In the rap field, Eminem and 50 Cent had “My Name Is” and “In Da Club,” respectively— two hip hop classics that launched two superstar careers.
Even less fondly remembered rappers like Vanilla Ice, Marky Mark, Iggy Azalea, and Snow were able to introduce themselves with style — in fact, “Ice Ice Baby,” “Good Vibrations,” “Fancy” and “Informer” all hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
So all Federline had to do was come up with a great hit single and he’d be well on his way towards being the next Eminem, at best, and the next Vanilla Ice, at worst.
Instead, he came up with “PopoZão.”
A Brazilian slang term for “big butt,” “PopoZão,” which was co-written by Spears, was slated to be the first single off his 2006 album, Playing With Fire. It’s easy to see why. With rhymes (?) like “Ready to rock those shows on the way to Rio/ Bring that Brazil booty on the floor” and “Wanna see where I’m going, oh?/ I might see some PopoZão,” the world would surely take notice of Federline’s lyrical genius.
Instead, snobby, soulless, cynical music critics who were more concerned about things like “quality” or “listenability” or “basic rhyming structure” panned it so badly that it might as well have been a Pauly Shore movie. Billboard called it a “monument to mediocrity,” DJ Star of the Star & Buc Wild show on New York’s Power 105.1 said it was “incredible— incredibly bad” and Today mused whether “K-Fed” was Portuguese for “no-talent hack.” I’m stunned no one made the obvious joke and called it “PooPooZão.”
Anyway, the reception was so bad that Federline pulled it from the album. A second song that was co-written either Spears, “Y’all Ain’t Ready,” was also left off.
Instead, he released “Lose Control” as his lead single — a song about how cool he is and how great his life is now that he’s a superstar.
In preparation for this piece, I listened to “Lose Control” for the first time in a long time, and the thing that immediately came to mind was that it sounded like a parody, only it wasn’t — almost like it was a Lonely Island song but without the comedy. Turns out, I wasn’t far off since MADtv made fun of it and actually came up with better lyrics than K-Fed.
K-Fed’s penchant for talking about how great he is, bragging about bagging America’s sweetheart, reveling off people’s hatred for him and rhyming words that don’t actually rhyme are recurring themes throughout his album.
“Louis Vuitton from my feet to my arm/ If you’re broke, then you’re probably thinkin’ I’m speakin’ in tongue,” he raps on “Snap.”
“They try to make me a victim of my own plots/ Cause people like to see you dead when you’re on top,” he claims on “The World is Mine.”
“Sucked in America’s hate, now I’m passing it back, huh/ Who told this bastard that he can’t rap?” he wonders on “America’s Most Hated.”
Well, count his then-wife among the folks who thought he couldn’t rap. At least, that’s what she said later on. “He really thought he was a rapper now,” Spears wrote in her 2023 autobiography The Woman in Me. “Bless his heart — because he did take it so seriously.”
Spears served as executive producer of Playing With Fire, although according to her book, she was barely present because she was pregnant at the time and K-Fed and his posse smoked too much weed in the studio. Also, she felt like she was being excluded as Federline either seemed determined to do it himself or was distancing himself from her since he was preparing to leave her.
Nevertheless, she duets on “Crazy” — the track that replaced “PopoZão” on the album. Perhaps understanding that the song needed more Britney and less Kevin, Spears ends up singing the (long) chorus and bridge, phoning it in with her usual sex kitten voice and delivery. Nevertheless, the song has a good beat and Federline’s flow isn’t bad on it. It’s probably one of the better songs on the album — although that’s not saying much.
Other songs are just unoriginal. “Dance With a Pimp” sounds like a bad rip-off of Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” right down to the beat and vocal delivery on the chorus. Federline also commits the cardinal sin of featuring a rapper on it (Ya Boy) who is much better and more talented than him, exposing his shortcomings for all to hear.
On the other hand, “Privilege” is a shockingly listenable song. Sounding like one of those Nate Dogg-type songs (featured baritone singer Bosko even does a decent job singing the chorus), Federline adopts more of a sing-song delivery on this, which is a nice contrast from his more fast-paced style on the rest of the album. If the album had more songs like this, it might have done better — or at least gotten better reviews.
Or maybe nothing he did could have made up for one, very obvious flaw that has nothing to do with musical ability, songwriting talent or production quality: Kevin Federline is highly unlikable and comes across as an arrogant, obnoxious, no-talent douchebag. He leans into this persona throughout the album, telling his many critics to f-off and flaunting what everyone (except for him) knew was going to be his 15 minutes of fame.
It’s tiresome and grating and gets boring after the first couple of songs. Even if he were likable, it’s possible most people would have hated him for “corrupting” Britney (even though subsequent events would spin that narrative on its head) — much like how many people hated Bobby Brown for what happened to Whitney Houston.
So of course, when it came time to promote the album, he went to one of the only places where you can be an arrogant, obnoxious, no-talent douchebag and be rewarded for it: the WWE. When he first showed up in October 2006, most wrestling fans (myself included) recoiled with disgust. But then we saw how naturally he took to it and how shockingly competent he was on the mic (he cut better heel promos than a lot of people on the roster at the time). He wasn’t a great wrestler, but he didn’t stray out of his comfort zone and stuck to telling his story (he may have been physically overmatched against the likes of John Cena, but he was good at cheating and understood how to use various wrestling tropes to his advantage – like abusing the “no-disqualification” rule). He was also very well-liked backstage and, as a longtime fan, took things seriously and treated everyone with respect. With some formal training he could have been a good manager or an Andy Kaufman-esque provocateur.
Especially since his musical career, and personal life, had already started spiralling downward. His album was released on October 31 to savage reviews. Entertainment Weekly called it a concept album about wasting Britney’s money while Slant Magazine said it was “just as disposable and dumb as you’d expect.” Billboard, at least, tried to give him some praise, pointing out that he enunciated well.
Needless to say, Playing With Fire did not light the album charts up. It sold 6,000 copies its first week and entered the Billboard 200 at #151. As of 2007, the album has only managed to sell over 16,000 copies in the U.S. That was the last bit of info I was able to get — evidently, Billboard stopped keeping track after that. By contrast, Blackout, Spears’ album that she released the following month, moved 290,000 copies its first week — and that was a letdown by her standards.
Somehow, things got even worse for Federline when he hit the road for his promotional tour. After two poorly-attended shows in New York and Chicago, during which time he only performed for about half an hour and refused to do “PopoZão,” Federline cancelled the rest of his tour.
And that was pretty much it for his career as a rapper. So there was only one thing left for him to do. In February 2007, mere months after his tour imploded, he poked fun at himself in a Super Bowl commercial for Nationwide Insurance. Performing “Rollin’ V.I.P.,” a style-parody of his stuff from Playing With Fire, he not only showed a sense of humor but he actually performed a song that was better than anything that was on the album. That probably tells you all you need to know about Playing With Fire.
In the meantime, his personal life suddenly got very, very messy. At around the same time he hit the road for his very, very brief tour, Spears filed for divorce. The two sparred for a while longer, including a nasty childcare dispute that had the effect of granting Federline sole legal and physical custody of their two children and placing Spears into her highly controversial conservatorship that lasted until a few years ago.
By the time #FreeBritney had become a thing, Federline had long-since moved on, re-marrying and having two more kids (that’s six in total — another six and he’s at Nick Cannon-level).
In the ensuing decade-plus, he’s seemingly devoted himself to being a father and raising his kids. He hasn’t stayed completely out of the spotlight, doing some DJ-ing and appearing on some weight-loss shows after admittedly letting himself go after his divorce from Spears.
He did make a one-time musical comeback in 2016, releasing “Hollywood,” a critique of “fake” celebrities and rappers. Perhaps in a move to try and generate buzz, K-Fed even disses Kanye West — although there’s no indication Ye responded. Between Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, Ray J, John Legend and Drake, West’s feud card was pretty full at the time.
Recently, he did a round of interviews after Britney’s conservatorship ended and then when her autobiography came out. He came across as more mature and level-headed in those interviews, as the time away from the constant glare of the spotlight seems to have been good for him.
On the other hand, Britney stans still hate him and were pissed that he would dare talk about anything related to the one-time pop princess— especially when he said he thought the conservatorship saved her life. Then again, I doubt K-Fed cares much at this point. They’ve always hated him and never understood what she saw in him in the first place.
Plus, he can feel secure knowing that, when her tell-all book came out, the media focused much more on how a different ex-paramour mistreated her. That’s because, unlike K-Fed, Justin Timberlake was a superstar who had, seemingly, avoided any real consequences for his questionable behavior for far too long.
He also had a lot farther to fall than K-Fed, who had been out of the public eye for 15 years and had long been consigned to the footnotes of musical history. I guess he can thank Playing With Fire and “PopoZão” for that.
