How Jay-Z Really Felt About Lil Mama Crashing His Performance at the 2009 VMAs
Lil’ Mama crashing the stage during Alicia Keys and Jay-Z’s VMA performance was both shocking and confusing to audience members and viewers. But no one was more taken aback than Jay-Z and Keys. Keys would later reveal that she didn’t notice Lil’ Mama on the stage at all. Now, she’s speaking on Jay-Z’s response.
Alicia Keys says she’s not upset over Lil Mama crashing their performance
Keys revealed that in the immediate aftermath of the stage crash, she was caught off guard. Despite the mayhem, Keys says she’s moved past the incident. When speaking with the hosts of the radio show The Morning Hustle Show, she responded positively when asked whether or not she forgives Lil Mama. “Of course,” Keys said.
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She added: “Of course. 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. I was on that stage, JAY was in the middle, she was on the other side of JAY, and I never saw her. Never. So umm, that was wild to me.”
Keys also said that in hindsight, she understands why Lil Mama felt compelled to join her and Jay-Z on the stage. “But I absolutely — it’s not even a statement,” she said. “That was then. You know, she’s from New York, too. You know, I think she really felt the energy of the record and she loved it and she couldn’t hold herself back. Look, this is what my music does to people. What can we say?”
The singer says she was unaware; reveals Jay-Z’s reaction
In a recent chat with Revolt TV’s Drink Champs, Keys spoke more about not being aware of what was going on during the performance when Lil Mama crashed the stage. She says she was laser-focused on the performance.
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“The truth of all the truths — all I know, we was on that stage,” Keys said. “JAY was here, I was here. In my head, I was such a gorilla at the time and I was like, ‘This is what’s happening. I’m going to destroy this record tonight.’ … Somehow, however she got over here, I didn’t even bear witness to. The whole show I was iced — so focused on making it amazing.”
It wasn’t until she got backstage and Jay-Z brought her up to speed on the ordeal. Keys added, “I went backstage and JAY was like, ‘So, you ain’t see that?’ And I was like, ‘What?’ He was like, ‘Nah, you ain’t just see what just happened?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, we killed it. That’s what happened.’”
Lil Mama has apologized several times
The backlash against Lil Mama was swift. She issued an apology in the days after the performance, speaking directly with MTV News to share her apologies publicly. “I want to apologize,” Lil Mama said at the time. “And I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful…I was feelin’ it and it just happened.” She even admitted to trying to get Jay-Z’s wife, Beyoncé, to join her. “As I’m walking, I stop, and I’m like— ‘come on, come on, let’s go,’ to Beyoncé, And she’s like, ‘What?’ She couldn’t believe it,” she recalled.
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In a 2015 interview with Complex, she said she wishes she handled things differently. “I was trying to celebrate the city,” she said. “Now that I’m a woman, how crazy would it have looked if she walked up there? They would have been like, [Beyoncé’s] jealous, she can’t stand to see [Jay-Z] with another woman. I am, someone who’s not in that state of mind, not thinking that way, just caught up in the moment, and when I look back and think, damn, she was right. I was tripping.”
The Harlem-born rapper says she’s tried reaching out to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys to apologize to them personally. Per Lil Mama, she has yet to hear back from either of them.
