Alicia Keys is celebrating her JAY-Z collaboration “Empire State of Mind” with a new single featuring Hova, which has surpassed 1 billion streams.
The “If I Ain’t Got You” singer took to Instagram on Saturday (June 15) to share a black-and-white clip of her and JAY-Z standing in front of bright lights before an epic orchestral crescendo .
Keys captioned her post: “1 dream. 1 song. 1 billion streams [three prayer hand emojis]. Thank you! we love you. What’s next….[eyes emoji, shushing emoji]”.
She later shared a photo of two performance microphones on X (formerly Twitter), one with the initials “J” and the other labeled “AK.”
While she didn’t caption the photo, she tagged CBS and Roc Nation, suggesting a surprise TV special may be in the works.
Please see the two articles below.
pic.twitter.com/9sQTTlY7UW
— Alicia Keys (@aliciakeys) June 16, 2024
Despite the song’s success, it didn’t make everyone’s life better.
Back in March, Lil Mama opened up about her infamous meltdown during the duo’s 2009 VMA performance.
This was something she admitted in an interview with the Jay Hill Network, where she also revealed that the subsequent backlash took a serious toll on her mental health.
“Yes, I was hurt at first,” she began. “As soon as I got home, Tyrese called me. He said, ‘Dude, you didn’t tell me you were performing! First of all, my heart was racing. I was going crazy with embarrassment.
“I had to deal with Ed Lover, Wendy Williams, Angie Martinez on the radio in the morning, and they talked to Jay and he was like , ‘Yeah, you know. I didn’t like it. He was angry, and I just tried to do whatever I could.’ After a while, I was like, ‘Forgive yourself, man.
She continued, “Man, I was hurt. I was frustrated. I was like, ‘Yo, what’s going on? ” And then everyone tells you, “You’re not doing a good job. ” People point at you and say, ‘What did you do?
Back in 2009, Alicia Keys teamed up with JAY-Z to perform their hit song “Empire State of Mind” at the MTV VMAs.
Apparently, Lil’ Mama was so moved by the performance that she jumped on stage to serve as the unofficial hype man—despite Hough’s wife, Beyoncé, tugging on her arm multiple times in an attempt to stop her from trending on Twitter. But no success.
Although “Lil Mama” has since become the butt of many jokes, Keys told The Morning Hustle in October 2021 that she didn’t even know the rapper existed.
“Listen, to this day, I literally never knew she was even on stage — that’s the craziest part of the whole thing to me,” she said. “I’m on that stage, [JAY-Z] In the middle, she’s on the other side of Jay, and I’ve never seen her before.
