Chris Brown Was Booed At The American Music Awards, And Kelly Rowland Came To His Defense
Before last night’s American Music Awards (or as many refer to it as, “That show’s still on?”) even began there was some Chris Brown-related drama. Chris was supposed to perform in a tribute to Michael Jackson but the whole thing was tossed into the dumpster at the last minute for reasons unknown. Maybe one of the reasons was that executives got a clue and realized Chris Brown singing Beat It on their stage might not be the best look. Even though Chris’ performance was canceled, it wasn’t a Chris Brown-free night at the AMAs. He won an award and the audience responded by booing Chris Brown for being Chris Brown. Chris wasn’t there to flip them off, but thankfully for him, Kelly Rowland was there to defend poor little Chris Brown.
As mentioned above, Chris was initially supposed to perform at the AMAs as part of its tribute to Michael Jackson‘s 40th anniversary of Thriller. But when AMA producers pulled the plug on the tribute, which was also supposed to include Ciara, Chris posted about it on Instagram:
Puck (via Variety) claims that the tribute was dropped after producers figured out that it wasn’t a good idea. How they felt it was a good idea in the first place is beyond everyone.
According to sources and a a report in Puck, a planned tribute to Michael Jackson was canceled just days before the show, apparently over the optics of Brown, who pleaded guilty to assaulting then-girlfriend Rihanna the night before the 2009 Grammy Awards, leading a tribute to Jackson, who faced a 2005 criminal trial for child molestation but was acquitted.
Now, here’s where the extra helping of shade comes in. Chris didn’t attend the awards ceremony, which was smart on his part because, like the classic 2000s TV show, Everybody hates Chris. That is unless you’re Kelly Rowland. While presenting the Favorite Male R&B Artist award with nominees, including Lucky Daye and The Weeknd, Chris beat the hell out of his competition (figuratively, that is) and won the award. In response, the crowd exploded into a shower of BOOOOOOS! And that’s when Kelly put on her mommy voice to shut the crowd up before offering Chris some words of motivation. via Deadline:
After Rowland announced Brown as the winner, boos from the crowd were audible and the camera panned out to show the whole theatre. Rowland looked surprised at the audience’s reaction and as she was trying to continue with her presenting duties, she told the crowd to “chill out.”
“Now Chris Brown is not here tonight so I’m accepting this award on his behalf,” she said before addressing the audience saying, “Excuse me… chill out.”
Rowland then continued, “But I wanted to tell Chris, thank you so much for making great R&B music and I want to tell him thank you for being an incredible performer. I’ll take this award — bring it to you. I love you. Congratulations. And congratulations to all the nominees in this category.”
Here’s that moment:
Kelly could have saved those kind words for a text message because no one cares!
Kelly did get love from the internet last week when she was asked during a radio interview about playing second fiddle to Beyonce during the Destiny’s Child days, and she said in part, “Here’s the thing, light attracts light. I am light. I am a beautiful brown shining light. So I don’t think anybody’s light dims anyone else’s. I think when other people start to compare you, I think that’s when it shows how dim they are of themselves. So I don’t take somebody else trying to dim my light anymore for anybody else. I love Bey, and I know that she’s a light, but I know that I’m a light too.” Kelly got praise for her answer, so she may have thought to herself, “You know, I need to even things out a bit, so I’ll defend Chris Brown and that’ll get the internet to hate on me again!” And it worked, Kelly. It worked.
Pics: INSTARImages