Jay-Z, Alicia Keys discuss Lil Mama crashing their performance
Everyone was so focused on Kanye West crashing Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech during the MTV Video Music Awards, that everyone seems to overlook that Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ performance was crashed too.
While Jay-Z and Alicia were performing their duet to the song “Empire State of Mind” during the awards finale, rapper Lil Mama appeared out of nowhere, walked on the stage and stood next to them.
Rapper Lil Mama apologizes for crashing Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' performance at the MTV Video Music Awards. Lil Mama is also a judge on "America's Best Dance Crew." (AP photo by Mark J. Terrill)
Radio personality Angie Martinez interviewed Jay-Z this week about the incident. Jay-Z said “Me, personally, I would never do that. I would never have the nerve to do that. It’s just like, someone’s up there performing, we went through rehearsals, we did run throughs and we worked really hard at the performance to put on a show for people and to interrupt that moment for us, you know, I don’t think that was the right thing to do. I actually thought it was the equivalent of what Kanye did to Taylor Swift. And I’m cool with her being excited and all that but you have to understand, people put in work to make that performance happen, that took weeks. I was a little angry to be honest, but what I’ma do, fight Lil Mama?”
Alicia Keys appeared on NBC’s Today Show and discussed the incident. She said “I would rather not speak about it because the performance was so phenomenal it doesn’t even matter about anything else. Jay-Z and I are native New Yorkers. It’s kind of a classic New York song like new Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli. I can appreciate her being overwhelmed and inspired but we would have preferred she did it from her seat.”
Lil Mama later released a statement apologizing to the performers. She said
“I did not mean any disrespect towards Jay-Z or Alicia Keys. I admire them and look up to them as role models. ‘Empire State of Mind’ had my emotions running high. In that moment I came up onstage to celebrate my two icons singing about NY.”
