During her recent appearance on REVOLT’s Drink Champs, Alicia Keys detailed “the truth of all the truths,” behind that moment on the 2009 MTV VMAs stage, when Lil Mama crashed her and JAY-Z’s electric performance of “Empire State of Mind.”
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Alicia recalled completely missing Lil Mama’s impromptu appearance, as she was too focused on their performance. HOV, however, was clearly annoyed, which was more than evident to anyone watching. Now, over a decade later, Keys detailed how one of the most talked-about viral music moments, besides that Ye and Tay mess, went down -- according to her.
“The truth of all the truths — all I know, we was on that stage,” she said using her hands to paint the picture. “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.”
Keys added, “I went backstage and JAY was like, ‘So, you ain’t see that?’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And he was like, ‘Nah, you ain’t just see what just happened?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, we killed it. That’s what happened.’”
This not being the first time she recently spoke on the matter, In October, Keys told the Morning Hustle she has long forgiven Lil Mama.
“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 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.”
After watching a playback of the performance, that actually checks — see for yourself.
Keys continued on to say, “but I absolutely — it’s not even a statement. 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?”
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