Following a controversial moment at this past Sunday’s American Music Awards where singer Kelly Rowland urged a charged crowd to quiet down their booing when she accepted the favorite male R&B artist award on Chris Brown‘s behalf, the former Destiny’s Child singer doubled down on her support for Brown, according to TMZ.
“I believe that grace is very real, and we all need a dose of it, and before we point fingers at anybody, we should realize how grateful we are for every moment we get,” Rowland said to a videographer encountering her as she got into her car on Monday. “We all need to be forgiven for anything that we could be doing — we all come up short in some sort of way. Grace is real, and we are humans, and everybody deserves grace, period.”
Though she doesn’t reference Brown directly, she responded to questions regarding the AMAs moment and whether he needs to be forgiven. At the awards show on Sunday night, Brown was reportedly set to perform a Michael Jackson tribute that was canceled at the last minute due to hesitations from show producers. Brown posted a rehearsal video to his Instagram page with the caption “U SERIOUS?,” and remarked in a follow-up comment on the post that it would’ve been his AMAs performance but said “they canceled me for reasons unknown.”
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When the 33-year-old R&B singer won the favorite male R&B artist award on Sunday, Rowland appeared on stage to accept the award on his behalf, responding to some initial crowd booing by saying, “Excuse me, chill out,” holding her index finger up to the dissenters in the crowd. Continuing, she remarked: “But I want to tell Chris, thank you so much for making great 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.” More crowd boos and shouts followed the conclusion of Rowland’s remarks.
Brown turned himself in to the Los Angeles Police Department in February of 2009 following a domestic violence incident with singer and then-girlfriend Rihanna, which required her hospitalization. He pleaded guilty in June and was sentenced to community service, domestic-violence counseling and a restraining order. His last network television performance took place at the BET Awards in 2017 and Brown has claimed that he was blacklisted from the industry because of the incident, although he has faced more legal issues since his physical altercation with Rihanna.
