‘It Showed Me Who My Friends Are’: Mary J Blige Finally Talks About That Infamous Burger King Commercial

June 28th, 2012 - By Alissa Henry
"Mary J Blige"

Source: MTV.com

Celebrities find themselves in all sorts of controversies and scandals throughout their career, but Mary J. Blige probably never guessed one of her major controversies would involve Burger King and Chicken Wraps.

But it did.

Back in April, someone leaked a Burger King commercial to YouTube featuring Mary J. Blige singing a jingle about their new chicken wraps to the melody of her song “Don’t Mind.” Before Burger King could yank the commercial for copyright issues, people were accusing MJB of buffoonery, damaging her brand and making black people look bad.

The singer has kept quiet about the controversy for months, but finally opened up to Hot 97′s Angie Martinez about the whole thing.

NecoleBitchie.com reports:

Mary J Blige admitted to Angie that she has been quiet about it for months because everyone was crucifying her and it broke her heart. She also revealed that the commercial was very different than what was sold to her by Burger King and she says that the infamous ‘What’s in a Chicken Wrap’ line was a question she was actually asking during filming, because she forgot the words. Long story short, she thought this was an amazing branding opportunity but Burger King did her kind of dirty. Mary’s artist Starshell also spoke up during the interview and said that Burger King had told her that the commercial was suppose to be about a guy dreaming, ‘like OMG! Imagine if the icon Mary J. Blige was singing to me’

For those that saw the commercial, we know that it definitely wasn’t a guy dreaming…and we’re not sure if that would have lessened the negative impact anyway.

It’s unclear if MJB saw the commercial before it was on Youtube for the world to see, but in her interview it sounds like she didn’t. NecoleBitchie.com says that when Angie asked her what her first reaction to the video was, she responded:

I went online to listen to the remix I did with Fat Joe and I’m looking for that and all I see is Burger King, chicken, buffoonery and I’m like, “What the heck?” It just broke my heart that people were going crazy and I understand the laughter and the jokes that was happening. That’s all good! You’re supposed to do that when something like that happens . It made people’s website [hits] go up. It made people get more ratings on their radio stations. Cool. Whatever. Hehe Haha, but the thing that hurt me is when people were just starting to say vicious and negative things that didn’t even have nothing to do with that. What it did was expose everyone and everything that was in my life and it showed me who my friends are.

When I saw it, it hurt me so bad. It looked like soft Adult Videos. On the part where it says “What’s in the chicken wrap?” How about this, I was asking them a question for real. I couldn’t remember the words so I was like, “What’s in the chicken wrap?” They sped it up and made me look ridiculous. It was like I wanted to crawl under the bed. It was crazy how I felt, you don’t even know. I had to go to the airport the next day when it was hot off the press. It was a mistake! People look at it as a mistake but I did it because I thought it was something that wouldn’t come out like that.

Celebrities definitely are not oblivious to criticism and Mary says the negative comments certainly affected her.

It hurt my feelings. It crushed me for like two days but after those two days I got up and I kept going. Andre Harrell, my real family members stood up for me but all those fair-weather friends, and suckas that were online poppin’ junk. People were jumping out saying “Uh-Oh, I didn’t do that, not me.” It’s like who asked you? And that’s the type of stuff that hurt my feelings so bad and I want to apologize to everyone that was offended or thought that I would do something so disrespectful to our culture. I would never do anything like that purposely. I thought I was doing something right so forgive me and now I’m moving on.

When she was making the commercial, she didn’t feel that it was a mistake.

Now I feel like I did. I didn’t know I was making one honestly. First of all, as a kid I always wanted to do something like a Burger King commercial, or ‘have it your way’ or even a McDonald’s commercial. When we were kids, my father, who is a musician wrote us a jingle to McDonalds, which is crazy. At the end of the day, it’s something that I always wanted to do and dreamed about and that’s why I did it. No, they didn’t pay me $2 million dollars. It was about an branding opportunity.

The prolific artist will certainly bounce back from this incident. It’s just unfortunate that it had to happen in the first place. She just thought she was living out a childhood dream when others accused her of playing into racial stereotypes in order to please “The Man”. I hope that she gets another (decidedly less controversial) opportunity to promote products in a Burger King or McDonald’s commercial like she wants to.

Here’s the entire interview and another look at that suspect commercial. Are you buying Mary’s explanation?



 



Alissa Henry is a freelance writer living in Columbus, OH. Follow her on Twitter @AlissaInPink

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  • Freda

    This was the main site that got all offended and started the fake outrage BS. MadameNoire, when you gonna get your pitch forks and torches ready to protest against Annie the Popeye’s lady?

  • Pingback: Mary J. Blige Speaks Out On Burger King Controversy | EgyptSaidSo.com - TV and Radio Personality Egypt Pops The Hood on Hollywood with Entertainment News, Advice, & Gossip

  • giselle

    I agree with the comments being that it was not that serious. However these comments just goes to show how opinions and people change when people address an issue. Someone said Madame Noire was the most critical. Well they reported what a lot of people where saying about the commercial’s racial undertones. Then if you go back to all the sites that reported it. It was the comments section where people went IN on her and went H.A.M. Now that it has died down some people are saying its not a big deal. People will switch it up LOL. I will say this I know what a good PR team does for an artist. I don’t know if BK did mislead her, she said they sped up the song. But what I will say is a good lesson is learned from this. Always understand what you are agreeing to and the situation before signing anything dealing with business matters. Of course BK will deny they mislead her and she will say they did. No one wants to take the heat of that. Remember the diary of Destinys child on MTV. When they did that commercial for MD beyonce dad was right there behind the camera then destiny’s child sat there through the editing. You could see how delicate he treated their image. That’s how you build a brand. Hopefully she can gain another branding opportunity

  • http://www.facebook.com/barbara.codner Barbara Codner

    What saddens me is that this was a dream of hers and people ruined it for her. :-(

  • bluekissess

    Other ethnicities enjoy chicken more than blacks. Blacks can sometimes be hypcritical. What about all the other subjects that should leave a sour taste in our mouths.

    Other celebrities promoted the chicken wrap as well. Jay Leno drove in one of his old school cars. Knock it off people

  • ok and?

    The commercial was never that serious; some Black people get mad over the stupidest things. I personally found the commercial to be more humorous, if anything, than racist. I love chicken and if someone is willing to pay me 2mil to sing about it, I bet ya I’d be on the set in a flash. There are way bigger issues out there!

    • Cha Cha

      I was just about the type the same thing… I don’t see what the big deal is… it’s not like she has chicken grease drippin from her fingers… some black people do get offended or mad over every little thing. They look for a reason to be mad… I’m black and I just thought it was silly… and yeah for 2M… I’d be killing that chicken song…

  • Guest360

    I didn’t really see the issue with it other than the fact that it was dumb and wasn’t what a woman of her caliber should be doing. If you’re going to promote a business, there was way of doing it that didn’t include singing about chicken and looking a little ridiculous. David Beckham is promoting BK too but you don’t see him on top of the counter kicking hamburgers like soccer balls or posing in underwear that has Ronald McDonald on his crotch. It was stupid and worthy of criticism but I didn’t get the racist overtones people tried to add to the situation. That, to me, was uncalled for. Of course MJB was hurt by that.

    • bluekissess

      Yes David is a soccer player but he’s also a sexx symbol so they played on that rather than soccer. Jay Leno collects cars so that was in his segment an actress played different characters for her segment. Since MJB is a Singer why not have her sing it? I would have a problem if she ate a bucket of chicken with greasy lips.

      • Guest360

        If she had to sing, she should have sung the McDonald’s jingle or at least not look so serious singing about a chicken wrap. They played up David Beckham’s sex appeal to be funny but they didn’t exploit it to make him look ridiculous. That was my point. The criticism of her ad was warranted. It was horrible. Just not the “She’s perpetuating black stereotypes” thing people tried to put on it. I didn’t see it. To me she looked uncomfortable and completely out of place singing about lettuce and CHEESE as if she was singing about her love for her man. It was over the top.

  • Ms. Blue

    I honestly didn’t think the Burger commerical was that serious. People made a big deal out of nothing. Folks acted like she was n*ked doing a b**ty dance holding a chicken sandwich. Geez.

    • http://twitter.com/SeikoLucianoMMI Seiko

      and even that would have been hilarious

  • Freda

    This was the main site that was overly critical of Mary J. Blige and I think this site was wrong in their bashing of her. She made one mistake and you guys say she’s a buffoon and jumped all over her. She has done more to encourage black women and just people in general with her life and music than she will ever get credit for. Mary was women enough to apologize for a mistake she made, when will Madame Noire apologize for calling her a buffoon?

  • L-Boogie

    I like Mary. She tells her true feelings at all times. I do think she was treated unfairly over this commercial. Just let her live and grow as an artist.

    • http://twitter.com/SeikoLucianoMMI Seiko

      I mean honestly… the way she was singing it??? Thats the way I sing when I bite into something I love… Like strawberry creme pie… OR KRISPY KREME DONUTS!