Source: Kevin Mazur / Getty
The 2009 VMAs was one for the books. Kanye West infamously stole the microphone from Taylor Swift in support of Beyoncé. Lady Gaga brought Kermit the Frog as her date, Janet Jackson danced to “Scream” in honor of her brother Michael, who had passed that year.
And Lil Mama interrupted Jay Z and Alicia Key’s performance of “Empire State of Mind.”
Y’all remember Lil Mama walking up on stage, almost as if she were possessed, to stand a bop with the rapper and singer as if she were a part of the set.
Lil Mama would explain later that she did so because being from New York, she felt inspired to be a part of what she perceived as an iconic moment.
As you can imagine, after all the work Keys and Jay Z put into crafting the song, rehearsing and staging the performance, they were none-too-pleased with Lil Mama’s antics. And they said as much in interviews about that moment afterward.
That same year, Jay Z told Angie Martinez, “To interrupt that moment for us, I don’t think that was the right thing to do. It was a lot of planning that went into that performance. To disrupt that was outta line.”
On the “Today Show,” Keys’ echoed Jay’s sentiment. When Hoda asked about the intrusion, Keys said:
“Of which I’d rather not speak about because the performance was so phenomenal that it really doesn’t matter about anything else.” After some coaxing, later she said, “We can appreciate her being overwhelmed and inspired. But we would have appreciated it if she would have did it from her seat.”
People have often wondered if this was a moment Lil Mama would ever be able to live down. I would say her recent unwarranted and unsolicited comments about Zaya Wade might have taken some heat off of that incident from over a decade ago.
But not so. Recently, someone on Lil Mama’s Instagram page evoked the moment all over again when he asked, “I thought they canceled you back when you jumped up on stage with Alicia and Jay Z?”
Most people would have ignored this comment. But Lil Mama clearly has excess time on her hands these days. And she wrote a paragraph in response.
In it, she shared that she attempted to reach out to both Jay and Alicia in an attempt to apologize but they weren’t exactly here for the olive branch.
In a screenshot obtained by The Neighborhood Talk, Lil Mama wrote:
“I entered the industry as a teenage Black girl from Brooklyn & Harlem NY. These situations are with mature adults at least 10 years my senior. I reached out in private to create an opportunity for communication and clarity. I haven’t heard back from either party yet. With that, continuously misrepresenting my brand in public won’t be tolerated….”
We can certainly understand why Jay and Alicia might have ignored this request. What really was there to say? Lil Mama got the attention she wanted in the moment and those two probably felt like they didn’t have anything else to offer her since she already took what she wanted.
See what she had to say to the commenter in the post below.
