Alicia Keys Hints At JAY-Z Collab As ‘Empire’ Hits Billion Streams
Alicia Keys is celebrating her song with JAY-Z, “Empire State of Mind,” hitting a single billion streams by teasing a new track with Hova.
The “If I Ain’t Got You” singer took to Instagram on Saturday (June 15) and shared a black and white clip of her and JAY-Z standing in front of vibrant lights just before epic orchestral music crescendoes.
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 took to X (formerly Twitter), exactly where she shared a photo of two overall performance microphones — a single with the initial “J,” the other labeled “AK.”
While she left the photo uncaptioned, she tagged CBS and Roc Nation, indicating that a surprise televised particular may possibly be in the functions.
Check out each posts beneath.
— Alicia Keys (@aliciakeys) June 16, 2024
Despite the song’s good results, it didn’t adjust everyone’s life for the much better.
Back in March, Lil Mama opened up about her infamous crashing of the duo’s VMAs overall performance back in 2009. She produced it clear that the fallout afterwards left her “hurt.”
That’s the confession she produced for the duration of an interview on The Jay Hill Network, wherein she also revealed that the subsequent backlash took a critical toll on her mental overall health.
“Yeah, in the beginning, I was hurt,” she started. “Tyrese called my phone as soon as I got home. He was like, ‘Bro, you didn’t tell me you was performing!’ First of all, my heart is racing. I’m already mad embarrassed.
“I had to deal with Ed Lover on the radio in the morning, Wendy Williams, Angie Martinez, who talked to JAY, and he was just like, ‘Yeah, you know. I didn’t like it.’ He was so angry, and I was just trying my best to do everything I could do. After a while, I was like, ‘Forgive yourself, bro. Move forward.’”
She continued: “Bro, I was hurt. I was depressed. I was like, ‘Yo, what’s going on?’ And then you got everybody telling you, ‘You’re doing bad.’ People pointing at you, like, ‘What did you do?’”
Alicia Keys Celebrates Multiple Tony Award Nominations: ‘Worthy Of Popping A Bottle At 7AM’
Back in 2009, Alicia Keys teamed up with JAY-Z to carry out their hit song “Empire State of Mind” at the MTV VMAs.
Lil Mama was, apparently, so moved by the overall performance that she hopped onstage to serve as the unofficial hypeman — even as Hov’s wife, Beyoncé, unsuccessfully attempted to quit her from becoming a Twitter trending subject by repeatedly yanking her arm.
Despite Lil Mama becoming the punchline of several jokes afterward, Keys told The Morning Hustle in October 2021 that she wasn’t even conscious of the rapper’s presence.
“Listen, to this day, I truly never knew she was even on the stage — that’s the craziest part of the whole thing for me,” she mentioned. “I was on that stage, [JAY-Z] was in the middle, she was on the other side of Jay, and I never saw her.”
