Janet Jackson doesn’t make many tv appearances — so when the reclusive pop legend strutted out unannounced in her high hat and tuxedo costume at Sunday’s 2022 Billboard Music Awards to current her buddy Mary J. Blige with the lifetime-achievement Icon Award, she was greeted with a standing ovation of her personal. Doja Cat, sitting within the BBMAs viewers at Las Vegas’s MGM Grand Backyard Enviornment, regarded significantly awestruck, and her response immediately grew to become a meme.
It was a women’ evening of mutual fandom and appreciation on the BBMAs, when Jackson, who obtained the Icon Award on the 2018 Billboard Awards, honored Blige this yr. “What makes an icon?” she started. “Is it the power to create, discover, and virtually pioneer a whole musical style? Is it the amassing of tens of millions of devoted followers that breathe your artwork each day, the identical followers to whom you continuously present love? Is it a multi-decade profession stuffed with not solely hits, however these songs that make you are feeling a sure approach if you hear them and get a sure look in your face? You already know, the look that claims, ‘Lady, sure! I perceive! Sure!’ The reply is the entire above. The reply is tonight’s recipient of the 2022 Billboard Icon Award, Mary J. Blige.”
Jackson continued, quoting a few of Blige’s most iconic songs: “Mary J. Blige represents fact. Her work has all the time given us consolation as a result of she sings me, she sings you. I reminisce, however I am not gon’ cry, as a result of although generally it appears like day by day it rains, I’ve bought no extra drama. I am simply wonderful with my life, my life, my life, my life. Within the sunshine, Mary has made a dedication to her followers to all the time be her genuine self now — that is actual love.” When Blige then walked out to ship her personal speech, she returned the love, telling Jackson: “Talking of icons, you had been all the time certainly one of our greatest inspirations rising up.”
Whereas Blige quipped in the beginning of her speech, “I’ve lots to say, so please do not roll the ‘wrap it up’ music over my factor,” she appeared humbled within the presence of Jackson’s greatness and by the Icon honor itself. “The best way the world is now, I feel folks assume icons are born that approach, that they develop into a legend in a single day. However that’s undoubtedly not the case,” she careworn. “It takes a variety of time, laborious work, and a variety of surviving, trial and error, to attain greatness. What an icon means to me is overcoming obstacles to perform the unthinkable and be wildly admired for having affect over a mess of individuals, and that’s what I’ve all the time represented. I have been on this journey for a very long time — one that did not all the time look the way in which you see me now, one that’s crammed with a variety of heartache and ache. However God helped me to channel these experiences and feelings into my music.”
Barely much less humbly, Blige continued, simply moments after BBMAs host Puff Daddy (aka Diddy) had accompanied her to the rostrum: “When Andre Harrell and Puff Daddy of Uptown Data launched the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul to the world, it was the start of a motion. Each inner-city woman was recognizing their very own and will relate to the whole lot I used to be saying. And each feminine artist that got here into the sport wished to do the whole lot I used to be doing, and nonetheless does to today. I used to be ghetto-fabulous, and I nonetheless am. So ghetto, so fabulous — and folks had been threatened by that. And now all people needs to be ghetto-fabulous.”
Blige concluded triumphantly, “The message of my music has all the time been that we’re not alone in our struggles, and I am not alone now. For therefore lengthy I used to be trying to find an actual love, however I lastly discovered my actual love, and that actual love is me. Who’s managing Mary J. Blige now? Me!” Nevertheless, she did humbly add that “there is not any I in staff” and thanked the chums, household, and business power-players who’ve supported her all through her lengthy journey — together with the late Harrell “for coming right down to these Schlobohm Initiatives and giving us hope and pulling me out,” her “huge brother” Diddy, and Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine “for inviting me to carry out on the Tremendous Bowl, as a result of I am past grateful.”
Jackson and Blige might have stolen the present at this yr’s Billboard Music Awards with out even singing, however the three-hour telecast did characteristic many A-list performers, together with Silk Sonic, Megan Thee Stallion, Ed Sheeran, Dan + Shay, Machine Gun Kelly, Miranda Lambert and Elle King, Florence + the Machine, Latto, Becky G, Maxwell (protecting the weird selection of “Woman in My Life” to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the above-mentioned Janet Jackson’s brother Michael’s Thriller album)… and, controversially, Morgan Wallen and Travis Scott, of their first televised performances since their respective scandals. The evening’s high winners within the common classes had been Olivia Rodrigo, who took dwelling seven awards, and Drake, who received 5.
For a full record of 2022 Billboard Music Award winners, click on right here.
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