“It just broke my heart,” said Blige. “People were just going crazy and I understand the laughter and the jokes and the stuff happening. That’s all good. You’re supposed to do that when something like that happens. It made people’s websites go up. It made people get more ratings on their radio stations but the thing that hurt me is when people started saying vicious negative things that didn’t happen.”
Blige confesses she didn’t immediately respond because she didn’t feel like she could change anyone’s opinion. “Everyone was doing what they were doing and saying what they were saying and I just felt that there was no need for me to say anything,” Blige admitted. “Everyone was running with it and just crucifying me and going crazy. I said it’s too much going on for me to try and stick my head out there and say anything, so I just pulled back and I watched everyone and everything.”
Above all, through this ordeal Blige learned who her real friends are. “What this did was expose everyone and everything that was in my life and it showed me who my friends are,” said the superstar. “But so many people reached out to me on a level of we knew what you were trying to do. We saw how it went terribly wrong.”
If that wasn’t enough, Blige did issue an apology to those who hurt by the ad. “I want to apologize to everyone who was offended who thought that I would do something that was so disrespectful to our culture. I would never do anything like that. I thought I was doing something right.”
