THE CLOSING performance of the 2009 VMAs ended in controversy.
Jay-Z and Alicia Keys were performing Empire State of Mind when Lil Mama hopped on stage.
Why did Lil Mama go on stage?
The three New Yorkers once took the stage at the same time, but it was not for a collaboration.
At the 2009 VMAs, Lil Mama unexpectedly jumped onto the stage while Alicia Keys and Jay-Z performed.
The song they were performing at the time was their chart-topping hit Empire State of Mind, which is an ode to the city of New York.
In a 2009 interview with MTV News, Lil Mama revealed she went on stage because she was emotionally moved by the performance.
“I’m sitting in my seat, two rows away from the stage and Jay-Z is walking through this tunnel and there’s this whole adrenaline rush just pumping,” Lil Mama said.
She went on to share how Jay-Z and Keys were singing the introduction to the song about their city of New York and it led to her getting “emotional.”
“I felt like yeah New York!,” she said.
“I started to feel him [Jay-Z] and I started to feel myself and I just felt the energy and I got up and started walking toward the stage.”
Did Lil Mama apologize for going on stage?
Lil Mama apologized to the performers during the MTV News interview.
She admitted she was “rooting them on” and did not mean to offend them.
“If in any way Jay-Z or Alicia Keys felt offended, I want to apologize to both of them,” the singer said.
She went on to say she would “love to have a one-on-one” with her fellow musicians.
She said she felt they had a bond while she was on stage.
“I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful,” Lil Mama said.
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Was Lil Mama forgiven by the performers?
Both Jay-Z and Keys commented on Lil Mama’s actions at the time.
Jay-Z called her action “out of line” in an interview with Angie Martinez.
“To interrupt that moment for us, I don’t think that was the right thing to do,” he said.
“It was a lot of planning that went into that performance. To disrupt that was out of line.”
Back in 2009, Keys was interviewed on the Today show about the incident.
“Of which I’d rather not speak about because the performance was so phenomenal that it really doesn’t matter about anything else,” she said to Hoda Kotb.
“We can appreciate her being overwhelmed and inspired. But we would have appreciated it if she would have did it from her seat.”