Normani has detailed why she canceled her BET Awards performance at the last minute.
Taking to social media about 30 minutes prior to the Los Angeles awards ceremony starting on Sunday, June 30, the singer, 28, revealed a “really bad accident” had forced her hand.
“I am more frustrated and disappointed than anyone believe me,” Normani wrote via Instagram Stories, also sharing a photo of herself leaning on crutches with one knee wrapped in a bandage. “While in rehearsals for BET I had a really bad accident and injured myself. I am normally good for powering through under any circumstance but unfortunately due to my doctor’s orders, I am just not able to make this performance happen.”
The former Fifth Harmony member wrote that despite her hopes, being on stage would have delayed “my healing” and that the ultimate decision left her feeling “devastated” and “like a disappointment” to her fans.
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She also thanked the BET Awards for giving her an opportunity to have taken the stage at all. “Sending my love to BET for giving me and all of the other beautiful black women this opportunity,” she wrote in the post.
The “1:59” singer, whose scheduled performance had been promoted by the BET Awards in the ceremony’s leadup, released her debut solo album, Dopamine, on June 14.
In the aftermath of Fifth Harmony’s 2017 hiatus, Normani released several singles, including “Motivation,” “Wild Side” with Cardi B and “Waves” — however her debut album struggled to materialize.
Normani told Us Weekly in 2017 that she was still attempting to define herself as a solo artist. “For so long I feel like people got an idea of who I was in the entity of the group,” she told Us. “Even within myself, I kind of got comfortable with that. So for me to kind of be detached from that has been an eye-opener for me and, like I said on the stage, me finally being able to discover myself and just different things, different parts of me. There are so many different layers and so many different portions that I haven’t necessarily been able to tap into that I have been introduced to, so it’s really, really cool. It’s like the sky is the limit.”
In 2018, the girl group, which consisted of Normani, Ally Brooke, Lauren Jauregui and Dinah Jane, officially parted ways.
Normani told Elle in an April 2024 interview that her apprehension over releasing Dopamine was due to her needing absolute confidence in the project.
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In an interview with Entertainment Weekly that was published on May 31, Normani opened up about why the album was delayed for an extensive period of time.
“I feel like it’s just been a combination of changing teams and people coming and going and also just real life happening that I couldn’t have predicted, and just doing my best to navigate that,” she told the outlet.
“Both my parents had gotten really, really sick, and I’ve had just a lot of deaths pretty much back to back in such a short time frame,” she said. In 2020, Normani’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and her father was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The singer continued: “I think people kind of forget that I am a human being. Granted, I’m really grateful that everybody’s remained really excited. I feel like that’s unheard of, especially after such a long duration of time.”
