Mary J. Blige Reacts to Backlash Over Super Bowl ‘Hip-Hop’ Halftime Show

I was nervous until I got on the stage,” she told Ebro Darden. “I was nervous in all the rehearsals—everybody was nervous. Everyone. But that was a huge moment.”

Blinge then reacted to conservative viewers who expressed outrage over the all-Black halftime show.

“There’s definitely an energy around people feeling as if the performance at halftime was somehow, uh, it was too raunchy, or it was too real,” Ebro told Blige, adding, “or, ‘How did these gangster rappers get on stage?’ Have you seen that conversation at all?”

No, I haven’t,” she responded. “That’s a small conversation compared to how huge that is. Like, hip-hop is here. It’s more than just a small thing. It’s just as big as rock ‘n’ roll right now. I don’t pay attention to all of that. I’m just paying attention to how we got raised up. Someone looked at us—well, somebody looked at [Dr.] Dre and said, ‘We need you.’ And Dre looked at me and said, ‘I want you.’ And so on and so forth with all his friends. So, I really don’t care about [the backlash].”

Blige, who recently released her new album, “Good Morning Gorgeous,” previously revealed that she didn’t get paid for the performance.

“Listen, you’re gonna be paid for the rest of your life off of this,” she told “The Cruz Show.” “People are gonna be knocking at your doors. They don’t have to pay me, but if they was paying it would be a lot of money.”

NBC’s broadcast of Super Bowl LVI averaged 99.2 million viewers, while 1.9 million tuned in on Telemundo.