Christte Michele has had a rough week or so for sure. The R&B singer accepted an invitation to perform at Donald Trump’s inauguration ball and like expected, received huge backlash online and elsewhere.
After that backlash, Chrisette defended herself through a statement saying she was “willing to be a bridge” but not many bought the argument. Her decision to play at the inauguration resulted in Spike Lee dropping her music from his Netflix series, Questlove announcing that he’d “pay her NOT to perform,” and just yesterday, her family “disowning her”. She told Billboard:
Originally I was supposed to perform directly after his first speech, and I had done that with Barack Obama before, so I was used to that kind of experience. And the woman who organized the event came and told me, “Now you’re going to go first and he’s going to go after you.” I looked her in the eye and said, “My family has disowned me. If you decide to Google me, you’ll see that America is writing about me in their newspapers. I’m the black poster child for discord right now, and he’s not going to shake my hand?” So no, I didn’t get to meet him.
Today morning, she appeared on The Breakfast Club show on Power 105 to talk with Angela Yee, Charlamagne Tha God and DJ Envy about her decision to do the event, how she got the call, the backlash, Spike Lee’s comments, how most people are criticizing her without knowing her history, and much more. Watch it below.