The 'Wild Side' singer shared the post from her choreographer chronicling the behind-the-scenes drama.
Normani took this year's MTV VMAs stage by storm with a sensual performance of her new single, "Wild Side," and according to her choreographer, Sean Bankhead, it was despite some serious drama.
On Thursday, Bankhead, who choreographed both the song's music video and the live performance, posted a video chronicling the "traumatic" drama that went down behind the scenes of the Sept. 12 event. Although the choreographer didn't specify everything that went down, he emphasized the short time they had to create the sequence because Normani was added to the show after fans petitioned to have her perform.
"Whew. I never posted about this performance…tbh it was traumatic as f**k everything that could have gone wrong did," he began the Instagram post. "Not to mention we had a WEEK to pull off something overly ambitious, the enemy was truly trying to attack Normani and team down to things STILL going wrong the day of the show. to the point where I personally had to redo and fix the screen content hours before we went live and to be honest, as much of a spectacle we wanted to put on and ALL the ideas we had a simple red and white screen and a clear box is ALL Normani needs to STILL steal the show."
Bankhead revealed that he recently watched the VMAs performance for "what it WAS instead of what we EXPECTED" for the first time and realized it was "actually kinda epic."
"I'm so proud of you kid and I'm sure one day we will tell how traumatic this moment was and you still got on that stage you f**king beast Normani," he added, also thanking the dancers, producers, and stylists who worked on the performance.
"You all are TRUE artist and I admire your gifts immensely! showing up and getting to paint on a canvas with y’all almost feels like IM not even good enough bc you exceed my limits! thank you family…sh*t we needed two days of rehearsal and it would have still been this flawless! DO YALL SEE THESE BEATSS!!!"
Normani shared the post to her Instagram Stories, adding, "but you're really gonna learn that God don’t play about me."
"Wild Side" -- which the singer recorded with Cardi B and first dropped in July -- has a special significance for Normani. As she explained to Power 106 at the time, it was important for her to work on, record and release new music amid her mother, Andrea Hamilton's, battle with breast cancer.
"This past year, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer," Normani said. "For me, this work that I was able to put out into the world really saved me, to be completely honest."
"Even just being on FaceTime with her as she's going through her chemo and her radiation, and just wanting me to update her on how this video is going, and how the music is coming, it really got her through that," she added. "It got my family through the darkest time of our lives."
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