She isn’t just Jenny from the block — she’s an iHeartRadio icon.
Jennifer Lopez accepted the Icon Award Tuesday night at the iHeartRadio Music Awards, complete with a show-stopping performance of her biggest hits and most iconic looks modeled by drag queens.
Introduced by Billy Porter, the drag queens strutted down the stage in J. Lo’s memorable looks over the years.
“The word for tonight is ‘icon,'” he shouted on stage while dressed in an all-pink ensemble.
Images and videos of Lopez flashed across the on-stage screens as the drag queens rocked similar outfits.
When Lopez herself emerged on stage, she donned a white fur coat with the word “Equality” on the train, eventually stripping it off as she performed “On My Way,” her latest song from her film “Marry Me,” followed by “Get Right.”
In true J. Lo fashion, the “On The Floor” singer shed the fur to show off her show-stopping dance moves in an all-black number, complete with sparkling arm-length gloves.
The Icon Award, LL Cool J said earlier in the night as he presented it to J. Lo, is reserved for a true icon, or someone who has transformed pop culture so much it would be “impossible” to imagine it without them.
“An artist so iconic, you only need to hear three letters to know who they are: J-L-O,” he said as the crowd cheered, followed by a montage of her rise to stardom, from her beginnings as a dancer, then an actor and as a chart-topping music artist.
“I wish I could tell you that awards are the most important thing to me, but that’s not true,” she said, despite appreciating “the shiny things.” “But it isn’t why I do this. It’s not what matters the most to me.”
Really, she continued, she does it for “you guys,” gesturing to the people in the audience. Love, appreciation and kindness from her fans are what matters the most, she added.
Between interruptions of audience applause and choruses of “I love you” from the crowd, she expressed her gratitude for her fans who allow her to do what she loves every day.
During J. Lo’s moment in the limelight, the camera continued to pan to actor Ben Affleck, her current flame, standing alongside his son Samuel, 10, and Lopez’s daughter Emme, 14, in the audience, beaming as she took the stage.
She said she couldn’t have imagined the life she was going to live “as a little girl growing up in the Bronx,” thanking her fans for making “that dream come true” and vowing to “never, ever take it for granted.”
“So I want to say thank you to every one of you for believing in me when other people didn’t, even when I didn’t,” she said. “Thank you for teaching me who I really am.”
“Icon,” she said of her newfound title, stands for “I can overcome negativity.”
