Lil Mama wants people to know she’s a proud New Yorker, and when the “Lip Gloss” rapper saw two of the Big Apple’s brightest stars onstage during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, her hometown pride momentarily got the best of her. Mama walked onstage uninvited during Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ performance of “Empire State of Mind.” Her intent was to root Jay-Z on, not disrupt the production, the Brooklyn native said.

“I’m sitting in my seat two rows away from the stage, and Jay-Z is walking through this tunnel and just, like, this adrenaline rush is pumping [through me],” Lil Mama explained to MTV News on Tuesday (September 15). “He started [rapping], and Alicia Keys is going, ‘The big lights will inspire you,’ and really, I got emotional. Yeah, New York! Jay! I started to feel him, and I started to feel myself. I just felt the energy, and I got up and started walking to the stage. I was just rooting him on as a champion. Bigging up my borough, bigging up my brother.”