Fifteen years later, Mr. Worldwide is finally telling the truth about that night. Pitbull sat down for a Q&A during Billboard Latin Music Week in Miami on Wednesday, and he looked back on his 2011 American Music Awards performance with Jennifer Lopez and said she caught him off guard with a sexy move.
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Anyone who was watching in 2011 remembers the moment. J.Lo started grinding on Pitbull while they performed “On the Floor,” and the rapper says that never came up in rehearsal.
He admitted that when she backed it up on stage out of nowhere, he got a little revved up, and he used the word “excited” to describe it.
Not Pitbull admitting he got a boner during that performance with JLo 😭 https://t.co/nrJ01ysO0n— Soum_designs 💚 (@SoumDesigns) October 22, 2026
The internet noticed back then, too. One Argentine outlet covered the performance the morning after and pointed to how the front of Pitbull’s pants looked during the dance. For years it was a wink-wink piece of pop culture trivia. Now he has confirmed what the cameras seemed to catch, which is a rare thing for a celebrity to do about a moment this awkward.
It also helps that the whole thing was never scandalous, just two seasoned entertainers doing what they do. That same night, Lopez took home the Favorite Latin Artist award, beating out Pitbull and Enrique Iglesias, so she walked off with a trophy and a viral moment.
Their stage energy has always been a big part of the brand, and in 2013 she even shook her backside right in front of him at Premios Juventud before pushing him into a pool.
For the record, the two have always kept it cute and platonic. Back in 2016, Pitbull told reporters that Lopez was one of the most special women around, calling her beautiful, powerful and sophisticated, and a pleasure to work with. Lopez had also, per reports at the time, shut down the dating chatter by saying he never had romantic interest in her. So this is a friendship story with a funny footnote, not a love triangle.
JLo has not publicly responded to the confession yet, and we’ll see if she has something to say about it. Knowing her, she’ll probably just smile, shrug and let the old footage speak for itself.