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Chrisette Michele suffered backlash from all over when she accepted the invite to perform at Donald Trump’s inaugural ball. Her “excuse” didn’t help much either, saying she felt called to do it and it was to bring unity. Now in her first post-performance interview, it sounds like it wasn’t even worth the trouble! Ha!
As to why she did it:
“The first thing I thought was that I have an opportunity to get in front of these people who don’t seem to understand who they’re talking to and show them what we look like. I felt automatically committed to making sure that I stood up for the women who’ve felt disrespected and the minorities who felt disrespected, communities that felt that they weren’t being heard or understood. I thought that it was almost my responsibility to not just say yes but to say yes with purpose, so that was my reasoning. And no, I didn’t think twice about it.”
On whether she got $750k, as rumored:
“We sent in an offer for how much we charge and they said, ‘Well we don’t have that,’ and the first thing I thought then was how I sang for Barack Obama and Michelle Obama free of charge. This is not a money thing. .. I didn’t perform for free. One, it wasn’t $750,000, but my manager did negotiate my contract.”
Then, the FAIL:
“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… I know he has a lot of other things going on. I don’t know if, like Barack and Michelle, he’s listening to my album or that I’ll be on his summer playlist, so I don’t want to take it that way. I’d rather be optimistic and think that they’ll come another chance where I can talk to him.”
That’s what you get! Read the full interview over at Billboard.