Lil Mama has opened up about her infamous crashing of JAY-Z and Alicia Keys‘ VMAs performance back in 2009, making it clear that the fallout afterwards left her “hurt.”
That’s the confession she made during an interview on The Jay Hill Network on Thursday (March 14), wherein she also revealed that the subsequent backlash took a serious toll on her mental health.
“Yeah, in the beginning, I was hurt,” she began. “Tyrese called my phone as soon as I got home. He was like, ‘Bro, you didn’t tell me you was performing!’ First of all, my heart is racing. I’m already mad embarrassed.
“I had to deal with Ed Lover on the radio in the morning, Wendy Williams, Angie Martinez, who talked to JAY, and he was just like, ‘Yeah, you know. I didn’t like it.’ He was so angry, and I was just trying my best to do everything I could do. After a while, I was like, ‘Forgive yourself, bro. Move forward.’”
She continued: “Bro, I was hurt. I was depressed. I was like, ‘Yo, what’s going on?’ And then you got everybody telling you, ‘You’re doing bad.’ People pointing at you, like, ‘What did you do?’”
The comments about the VMAs begin at the 2:35 mark below.
Back in 2009, Alicia Keys teamed up with JAY-Z to perform their hit song “Empire State of Mind” at the MTV VMAs.
Lil Mama was, apparently, so moved by the performance that she hopped onstage to serve as the unofficial hypeman — even as Hov’s wife, Beyoncé, unsuccessfully tried to stop her from becoming a Twitter trending topic by repeatedly yanking her arm.
Despite Lil Mama becoming the punchline of many jokes afterward, Keys told The Morning Hustle in October 2021 that she wasn’t even aware of the rapper’s presence.
“Listen, to this day, I truly never knew she was even on the stage — that’s the craziest part of the whole thing for me,” she said. “I was on that stage, [JAY-Z] was in the middle, she was on the other side of Jay, and I never saw her.”
Then, back in March 2023, Keys and Lil Mama shared a warm embrace at an event in New York City as Teyana Taylor looked on. While it’s unclear what the event was for — though Revolt suggested it was to celebrate Taylor’s latest film, A Thousand and One — it’s the video of the “Girl on Fire” singer and the “Lip Gloss” rapper-turned-actor that sent social media into a tizzy.
“God is Moving all up and through this MF!” wrote one commenter. “Hope she apologized again cause man…” wrote another.
