Jamie Lynn Spears attends the 50th annual CMA Awards at the Bridgestone Arena on Nov. 2, 2016 in Nashville, Tenn.
Michael Loccisano/Getty ImagesBritney isn’t the only Spears with the world’s attention on her.
Jamie Lynn Spears, Brit’s younger sister, has penned her memoir which, judging by an excerpt published by People, will drill deep into her painful past.
The singer and actress recounts the struggles she faced when, in 2007, she became pregnant with her daughter Maddie, aged just 16 years old.
After coming out with the news to her family, “one person after another—and there were many—came to my room trying to convince me that having a baby at this point in my life was a terrible idea,” she says. The topic of a termination was put forward.
Home “felt like a prison without a smartphone or connection to the outside world. My team believed everyone outside of the inner circle was a potential threat,” she explains. “They went so far as hiding my pregnancy from my sister, claiming, ‘It's too risky to tell Britney about the baby.' I needed her more than ever and she wasn't able help me in my most vulnerable time.”
At the time, Britney's “condition” was “spiraling into something more concerning,” she writes, in an extract from Things I Should Have Said. “They were concerned her instability at that time made her untrustworthy. I went along with what my team told me to do because I was a minor and didn't want to create any more issues. Britney learned of the pregnancy when the article was released. To this day, the hurt of not being able to tell my sister myself lingers.”
Spears, now aged 30, announced the book in October, explaining at the time that she began writing it shortly after her Maddie, then-aged 13-year-old, had a near-fatal ATV accident in 2017.
"I owe it to myself, my younger self, and to my daughters to be an example that you should never edit yourself or your truth to please anyone else,” she explained in an Instagram post, announcing the book. “I know I still have ALOT of learning to do, but I feel like finishing this book gave me closure on this '30 year long' chapter of my life, and hopefully helps anyone else out there who forgot their worth, lost their voice, or is trying to break an unhealthy cycle in their life."
Things I Should Have Said is set to be released on Jan. 18, 2022 via Worthy Publishing.
NEWS
Say what you will about the UMG defamation lawsuit over "Not Like Us," but it hasn't been difficult for Drake to stay on top in any case. Whether you think the industry is trying to take him down or people dismissed him as their champion, you're probably missing the big picture.
According to Hip Hop All Day on Twitter, the Toronto superstar became the first rapper to surpass 5 billion streams on Spotify in 2025, continuing his stretch this year as the most streamed rapper on the platform. Others aren't too far behind, but these continually impressive commercial numbers are hard to knock off.
Of course, there are a few reasons for this. One of them is the OVO mogul's recent collab album with PARTYNEXTDOOR, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U. Both the Billboard Hot 100 success of the solo cut "NOKIA" plus rapid sales for the project as a whole translate to a whole lot of engagement on the digital streaming platform.
Another driving factor behind Drake's numbers is the anticipation for his next album (albeit with no release date), which he recently confirmed he's working on during a gambling livestream with Adin Ross. As such, we imagine a lot of die-hards are probably coming back to their favorite catalog material to prepare for their wildest dreams – if they weren't already bumping The Boy nonstop to begin with.
Even Kanye West is giving the 6ix God his props these days, even though his long-standing beef with Drizzy is constantly a subject of his flip-flopping tendencies. "This is the biggest victory in music history, right here," Ye said of the UMG lawsuit. "I'm never finna call Drake out of his name. I'm Team Drake, 100 percent. And Team Kendrick, and Team All Of Us... Kendrick needs to be going at UMG at this point. [...] Like, let's stop aiming all this at each other. You have no idea. Everything is worth everything for a moment like this. Where we stop going at each other and we go at the slave masters."
Will Drake be successful and impactful with this? That's up to the court to decide, and up to the industry and its artists to reckon with following their decision. But in the meantime, that Spotify revenue is looking beefy.
