Chris Brown has a good friend in Kelly Rowland. The former Destiny’s Child singer proved that when she defended him at the American Music Awards on Nov. 20, after people in the audience started booing his win for Favorite Male R&B Artist. It was when Kelly took the stage to present the award, and confidently announced his name that people started getting upset.
Kelly Rowland puts the #AMAs audience in check after Chris Brown won ‘Favorite Male R&B Artist.’ https://t.co/A5M053wrMK
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) November 21, 2022
But as you can see in the video above, she quickly turned the sour moment around as best as possible. “Now, Chris Brown is not here tonight, so I’m accepting his award on his behalf,” she started before people started booing. But before they could go any further, she cut them off, “Excuse me. Chill out.”
Once they shut up, she continued, “I want 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 and bring it to you — I love you. Congratulations, and congratulations to all the nominees in this category.” Then, she blew a kiss to the people who were booing and walked off stage.
It’s not totally clear why the audience members were booing in that moment, but it’s no secret that Chris has a troubled past. Interestingly, Chris had been scheduled to perform at the AMAs with a Michael Jackson tribute, but it was canceled at the last minute. Before the show, he shared a video on Instagram that showed off his rehearsals, and he captioned it with: “U SERIOUS? WOULDVE been the ama performance but they cancelled me for reasons unknown.”