Kelly Rowland, 41, wants people to show “grace” to Chris Brown, 33, who she controversially stood by at the 2022 American Music Awards this past weekend. Kelly defended the “Forever” singer who won Favorite Male R&B Artist but was booed by the audience for his troubled past, including his physical assault on Rihanna. Kelly was asked about supporting Chris by a TMZ reporter who approached the former Destiny’s Child singer at her car in West Hollywood on Monday.
“I believe that grace is very real,” Kelly explained. “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 that we get. Even our own things that we have. I just think it’s important to remember to be human. We are humans.”
When the reporter asked if Chris should be “forgiven”, Kelly responded, “We all need to be forgiven for anything that we could be doing. Anything that we’re thinking. We all come up short in some kind of way. And grace is real. We are humans. And everybody deserves grace.”
Kelly Rowland puts the #AMAs audience in check after negative reaction to Chris Brown winning ‘Favorite Male R&B Artist.’ https://t.co/A5M053eiyC
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) November 21, 2022
Kelly was presenting the AMA that Chris won, when the audience reacted negatively to the R&B singer who wasn’t at the award show. “Excuse me. Chill out,” Kelly said to the rowdy audience, before she praised Chris. “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.” Interestingly, Chris was supposed 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.”
Some fans haven’t forgiven Chris for physically assaulting Rihanna, 34, after the 2009 Grammy Awards. They were dating at the time and broke up after the attack, but they wound up briefly getting back together in 2012 and 2013 before calling it quits.