When Nelly was asked if he would perform at Donald Trump’s inaugural ball, he reportedly said that he’d be honored to.
But his decision to say yes was met with huge backlash.
Fans, social media users, and even some of his friends in the music industry were very vocal about how disappointed they were that Nelly agreed to perform on January 20th, 2025.
He was accused of all kinds of things.
Some said that he was letting the Black community down; others alleged that he was a sellout and that he was only doing it for the money.
Nelly Defends Himself
The criticism against him only got worse when Nelly tried to defend himself.
HipHopDx reported that during a live conversation he had with rapper Willie D a day before the inauguration, Nelly addressed all the online hate that he’d been getting.
But what exactly were his reasons for accepting the president’s offer?
He began his defense by saying that people sometimes had a quick response to something that, on the surface, might seem wrong to them because they didn’t agree.
Nelly stated that he was not political.
He wasn’t trying to tell anyone who they should vote for.
He then said: “I’m clueless on a lot of things when it gets down to it, So what I tend to say is… do your homework and make your own decisions about it.”
Something that Nelly kept stressing throughout the interview was that he wasn’t performing for the money – he was doing it because he respected the office.
Is Nelly A Donald Trump Supporter?
He claimed that there was no politics involved because Donald Trump had won.
He wasn’t competing against anyone else anymore.
He was officially ‘the commander-in-chief.’
Willie D asked his guest if he was a Donald Trump supporter, and Nelly kept his answer pretty neutral.
He said that he supported the office of the president of the United States regardless of who was in it.
He repeated that he respected the office.
Nelly insisted that if President Joe Biden had asked him to perform, he would’ve performed.
If Vice President Kamala Harris had won and asked him to perform, he would’ve performed.
An article by Buzzfeed pointed out that he made that claim just moments after he’d openly criticized Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who, at that time, were technically still in office.
At one point in the interview, he also noted that he was never asked by Kamala Harris to perform during her campaigning.
He said: “I didn’t get none of that 1.5 to try to help somebody get voted.”
Nelly’s Support For President
Nelly also talked about how he’d been born on a military base.
A Fox News insider said that many of Nelly’s uncles and aunts had served in the army for the democracy of the U.S. and the right for everyone to vote.
When speaking to Willie D, the rapper made a comparison between what he was being asked to do by the president and what he believed was expected of U.S. soldiers.
His reasoning was that if soldiers could risk their lives for the president, then he could perform for whoever was in the Oval Office.
When he was asked what he thought about the allegations that Donald Trump is a racist, Nelly brought up his own question in response.
He asked Willie D if he was talking about ‘candidate Trump’ or ‘President Trump,’ because they were two different people to him.
Nelly claimed that he wasn’t defending Donald Trump and that people had the right to be angry if they were affected by the election.
But he then doubled down on his excuse that he was performing for the office that he’d been taught to respect.
He finished by making the argument that if politics was above and beyond anything other than what a person stood for, or what a person had done, then he apologized if he “quote-unquote” let anyone down.
Online Users Express Disappointment In Nelly And Other Rappers
Saying that the online reaction to Nelly’s defense of his performance was less than positive would be a serious understatement.
A Twitter user wrote that him not doing it for the money made it worse.
They claimed that it was also a lie.
Someone else on the platform said that watching Rick Ross, Soulja Boy, Nelly, and Snoop Dogg all perform at Donald Trump’s inaugural event added an extreme amount of validation to what Malcolm X once said about some Black celebrities being puppets.
A person on Instagram commented: “The military doesn’t go to war for ‘whoever’ is in office… they go for the country.”
Another online user wrote that respecting the office was one thing, but ignoring the harm caused by the person in it was another.
They added that accountability mattered.
Kelly Rowland Speaks Out About Nelly’s Inauguration Performance
One of Nelly’s celebrity friends was also shocked by his choice to participate in the event, according to the Daily Mail.
A source for the outlet said that Kelly Rowland, who collaborated with the rapper on their hit song Dilemma, was not happy when she heard the news.
In October 2024, she supported Kamala Harris by speaking at one of her rallies alongside Beyonce.
The insider said: “She was stunned when she learned that Nelly was to perform and informed his camp that he does not have her consent to perform the song.”
They alleged that Kelly had blocked Nelly from performing Dilemma at the inaugural ball.
She reportedly even told him that if he sang their song during his performance, she’d be willing to get legal, and her team would issue a ‘takedown notice.’
Nelly Speaks Out About Donald Trump
Something that’s been brought up by a number of news outlets is how Nelly had previously stated that he was not a fan of Donald Trump getting political.
In a 2017 interview he had with Page Six, Nelly revealed that he used to like Donald Trump, but he didn’t like him as his president.
Nelly explained: “He doesn’t surprise me as a person, he surprises me as a president because you don’t expect certain things, certain attitudes.”
He also made the claim that he wouldn’t be staying at any Donald Trump hotels while he was on tour that year.
Another Daily Mail insider alleged that Nelly wasn’t worried about the backlash he’d gotten because he was supposedly expecting to make more money from his performance than he’d made from his music sales in recent years.
Trick Daddy Defends And Congratulates Nelly
A report by Newsweek revealed that rapper Trick Daddy recently made a shocking claim about the amount of money he’d heard Nelly got paid for being a part of the inaugural ball.
When he was interviewed on The Beat Miami, he publicly congratulated Nelly for reportedly getting $1.5 million for his show.
He defended Nelly by saying: “It’s not nothing personal when it’s your business. If my worst enemy booked me to do a concert, I’m going to do that concert.”
Reddit users commenting in a thread about Trick Daddy’s claim shared that they didn’t agree that Nelly could’ve earned that much for his appearance.
One person alleged that the rapper was playing country bumpkin festivals and would probably be earning $50k for a show these days.
Another person wrote that Nelly’s integrity had a price, and they wished him luck getting paid.
According to Taste of Country, artists usually don’t get paid for performing at inaugurations, but things like their travel costs might be covered.
The creative director who was responsible for both of Barack Obama’s inaugurations revealed that the performers at the ex-president’s 2009 event were invited to perform, but they supposedly did not get any payment.
The article claimed that it wasn’t clear if it would be the same for this latest inauguration.
Snoop Dogg Faces Backlash For Performing At Donald Trump’s Inauguration Ball
Another famous person who got flak for performing at one of the inaugural events in 2025 was Snoop Dogg.
People also claimed that he was a hypocrite.
In 2016, the Hip hop icon went on Instagram and cursed Donald Trump out.
He told him to go get a new hairdo, and he reportedly even said that if anyone performed at his inauguration, they were a sell-out.
But by 2021, he was singing a different tune.
In an interview with The Times, he said that he had nothing but love and respect for Donald Trump.
But people were surprised when it came out that he’d be performing at the Crypto Ball on January 17th.
Forbes reported that he lost more than 571,000 followers on Instagram after the news came out, and he supposedly lost 20,000 on Twitter, too.
