Sinbad Profanely Mad at Justin Timberlake for Prince ‘Diss’

Sinbad was among those who were outraged by Justin Timberlake’s halftime performance at the Super Bowl, where he invoked Prince despite having a history of tension with the late singer.

“Okay punka— justin Timberlake,” he tweeted. “You was cool till you pulled that Prince bulls—. You dissed Prince on a track of yours and you dissed him onstage when you lowered the mic stand onstage when prince won an award. Later for ya a—.”

The perceived beef between Timberlake and Prince goes back to 2006, when Timberlake released “Sexy Back.” Shortly after the song was released, Prince joked onstage at the Emmys that “sexy never left.”

Many fans thought that Timberlake had taken this as a sleight, because he referenced it in his verse on Timbaland’s “Give It To Me” later that year. “If sexy never left, then why’s everybody on my sh–? Don’t hate on me just because you didn’t come up with it,” he sang.

Timberlake also appeared to mock Prince at the Golden Globes that year. He was presenting the award for best original song, which went to Prince, but the singer was stuck in traffic on his way to the award show. Timberlake lowered the microphone close to the ground, mocking Prince’s height, then lunged forward as though handing the trophy to someone very short.

This is all part of the reason why fans thought it was not Timberlake’s place to appear on stage with a projection of Prince on Sunday, though it does go a little deeper than that. Prince was famously protective of his creative control and rights to his own music, and his friends and family have made it clear that he never wanted to do posthumous duets or performances the way Tupac Shakur and other artists have.

In a 1998 interview with Guitar World, he specifically stated his distaste for the practice.

“With digital editing, it is now possible to create a situation where you could jam with any artist from the past. Would you ever consider doing something like that?” his interviewer asked.

“Certainly not,” Prince replied. “That’s the most demonic thing imaginable. Everything is as it is, and it should be. If I was meant to jam with Duke Ellington, we would have lived in the same age. That whole virtual reality thing… it really is demonic. And I am not a demon.”

“Also, what they did with that Beatles song [“Free As a Bird”], manipulating John Lennon’s voice to have him singing from across the grave… that’ll never happen to me,” he went on. “To prevent that kind of thing from happening is another reason why I want artistic control.”

Early reports said that a Prince hologram would join Timberlake onstage, but he reportedly promised Sheila E. that that wasn’t the plan. Fans and friends of Prince weren’t much happier with the giant projection, however. In addition to his tweet, Sinbad returned to social media later to better articulate his feelings on the issue.