There was a segment of the show between commercials at the midway mark that was all tributes. It started with Wayne Brady's Little Richard tribute, went right into a montage of faces of people who passed this year (this is where Betty Wright and Bill Withers were shown), and then into Lil Wayne's Kobe Bryant tribute. That's what made it extra noticeable to me.
Jennifer Hudson's tribute to Aretha was a couple of commercial breaks before all of that.