The 2007 BET Awards was billed as the “Main Event” and with a star studded lineup you have to wonder if this was going to be the biggest award show yet. But there’s always those things that you don’t see on TV…
Trapped in the media room for the 2nd year in a row, the BET Awards figured that it would be wise to take care of their beloved media outlets. So catering was in full effect. Red snapper, honey crisp chicken, mac & cheese, spinach lasagna and much more kept our bellies full as we awaited the show. But this isBET so you know it had to have a little ghetto attached to it with big ass jars filled with strawberry lemonade and passion fruit tea.
With Jennifer Hudson opening the show with “I’m Telling You I’m Not Going”, things went off with a bang. But the backstage area’s collective jaws dropped when Jennifer Holiday (the original Effie White) appeared and blew the doors off the venue with a powerful duet. Could they possibly follow up a performance like that with a great show?
The great Michael Buffer greeted fans with his trademark “Let’s Get Ready To Rumble” intro but switched up his words with “Let’s get ready to jiggle” as Monique did her dancing number for all the big girls out there. She rocked it…can’t even front. With the exception of the Parkers and her lame movies, she’s a funny ass lady.
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T.I. came out looking like a damn sailor for “Big Things Poppin” . The CD may not be 100% ill but T.I. can sure work a crowd. An interesting moment happened when T.I. went into the crowd to show some love but when Tony Yayo reached his hand out, T.I. conveniently missed him. Probably no beef but it was side-splitting nonetheless.
As the show progressed, folks in the back were a bit weary of Ne Yo’s performance. Was he lip syncing “Because of You”? Did he forget the words? What the hell happened? Pretty lackluster and the fact that he danced more than sang was slightly annoying. Fabolous coming out for “Make Me Better” didn’t really help matters any. We’ve seen much better out of Ne Yo and expect better out of him in the future.
Diddy rocked with Keyshia Cole for “Last Night” but surprised the hell out of the crowd when he brought Lil Kim out for a long awaited reunion. But damn Kim…you ain’t looking too hot anymore ma. Wish you would have never opted to go under the knife.
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Back in the media room, Michael Clarke Duncan punked a timid media room crowd by demanding questions be asked. He went on to mention that Don Cheadle was very deserving of his Humanitarian Award and the praise is long overdue. He also noted that this is the first Award show he was invited to and that the long rumor that he said no to BET Awards and shows of that sort was squashed.
Beyonce performed on some weird ass Matrix meets Tron type shit. After she revealed her midriff and performed “Get Me Bodied” (WTF does that mean anyway), we wondered if Bey was gonna jiggle right on out of her top. All we did get that jiggled out was Monique though (rats!). Interestingly enough, Beyonce introduced her DC counterpart, Kelly Rowland, as she performed her single “Like This”. Wonder what Michelle is doing these days? Just when we collectively pondered backstage *BAM* she pops out with Beyonce’s sis, Solange, to do some posing and dancing at the end. We still wonder what the hell Michelle is doing these days, especially when you are regulated to background dancer in Beyonce’s performance.
When T.I. accepted his award they cut right to Ludacris (who’s manager got punched out by T.I. over the weekend), and Ludacris kept his composure and applauded his fellow ATL native’s acceptance speech. We patiently waited to get the jumpoff when T.I. came to the backstage area.
Back to Lip Syncing though…
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Diddy lip syncing was no big shocker. Neither was the fact that Lil Kim came out looking a gotdamn mess. I feel bad for the poor lil one. Ah well…she brought that shit on herself. Keyshia Cole looked hoodrat fabulous but we pretty much expect that out of Keyshia these days.
50 Cent was obviously lip syncing his performance and had most of us bewildered by how bad that shit really was. When the lips and the words don’t match we got a problem son! I can slightly understand a singer doing this but an emcee? Hell nah buddy. 50 dipped shortly after his performance. I guess he had to get ready for the nutty Interscope party at Fascade in LA. That party featured a gotdamn amusement park right outside the club. Real talk. Slides, rides and all types of shit. So before you got your club on you could make yourself nauseated riding those shake and jerk rides amusement parks are known for. It had to cost a pretty penny, which could have been used by Interscope to market another artist who actually needs it. But watching model types sliding down a big ass slide was a bit entertaining. 50 could have a party in a sewer and people would show up dressed to impress though.
Back to the backstage antics…
Former Rap City host, Joe Clair, mentioned that he is producing an album for Mike Epps as well as create a comical hip hop album for himself. I Wanna Be A Rapper Now is the name of his upcoming album. The entire album is spent with Claire trying to figure out what type of rapper he would be. He did mention that he is all about upliftment and loves artists like Public Enemy and Rakim. He even dropped a hot 16 for the media. Was it really hot? Yeah fam…better than most of your favorite emcees these days.
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Charlie Murphy said the “N” word will be used forever when asked for his opinion. He also stated that he would love to collab with Dave Chappele but Dave is doing what makes him happy right now.
T.I. completely avoided the question about the KO-ing Shaka Zulu. He dodged the question by smiling, and subsequently blaming his alter ego T.I.P.
“On behalf of my partner T.I.P., I want to apologize for what happened the other day,” he said. “They say there’s a fine line between brilliance and insanity. It was very unfortunate and very inappropriate. But I don’t want to divert attention from the positiveness of the BET Awards. That’s what is more important.”
Ironically as that question was being asked, Ludacris won the best Collaboration award on the screens next to him. He also said that TI Vs TIP is the best album to come around in a long while and should be compared to the likes of Ready To Die, Illmatic, All Eyes On Me and Aquemini. Word?
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Doug E Fresh talked up his new film with Spike Lee titled You’re No One Til Someone Kills You. When asked about American Idol runner up Blake Lewis, Fresh said that Lewis is Hip Hop and when Lewis met Fresh he instantly wanted to “cipher”. He also mentioned that when it was decided that Fresh and Lewis would collaborate on American Idol, they wanted the two to battle but Doug didn’t want to do it for fear of sonning his fellow beatboxer and opted to record a record together.
When Public Enemy hit the building it was refreshing as hell. Professor Griff announced Ronald Reagan is the devil, which brought chuckles out of the media. Chuck D spoke on the Don Imus situation and said that the indy emcees need more attention (word!) because there are so many more dimensions of hip hop that get no attention and could very well off set the criticism hip hop has garnered recently. He also stated that he foresaw the drop in sales and mentions the 2 record companies who rule the industry. Flav, in contrast, let it be known that he’s gonna drop some more babies (7 Kids thus far). Damn homie!
Elsewhere..
Alicia Keys looked great and said her new album is coming in October. More movies are on the way including a project executive produced by Halle Berry about a bi-racial classical pianist. She took the time to mention that artists are a voice of the people that do not recognize or utilize their power and her charity work is personal.
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Chaka Khan surprised some with the notion that the supposed scratching in the groundbreaking “Feel For You” was completely unintentional and left on after the slip of the finger. Many always assumed the scratching was intentional but that bubble got burst.
Ashanti is dropping a new album titled The Declaration but cleverly dodged the questions about whether she’s still with the Inc or not.
Don Cheadle mentioned that won’t reach out to Paris Hilton about charity work after Ms. Hilton stated that she is ready to donate money and time (yeah right). Says he will be an Asian Woman in his next film (joking).
Al Sharpton gave it to George Bush (again) for not giving attention to Dafur. He smashed the usage of the N word and said there’s only hate speech and free speech and you can’t have both.
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Now, I usually sit back at these award shows and watch but when President and COO of BET, Debra Lee, and chief of programming, Reggie Hudlin, took to the back area, I had to ask how they combat the much needed criticism that BET has gotten. I directed the question “How will BET handle the criticism of its depiction of African American women?” to Debra Lee but Debra gave me a slight screwface and allowed Hudlin to handle my question. Hudlin mentioned to combat the criticism of the depiction of Black women that they are the network that does the most recuts and edits for its music videos than everyone else (word?). Also the award presented to Diana Ross was done to combat the images of women on TV (which is interesting because Ross is a diva type that doesn’t really help the image of Black Women). Hudlin went on to say that everyone is going to have a complaint and he can only do as much as he possibly can to balance it out. Lee took a backseat to Hudlin as he handled the questions with great expertise and deflected as much criticism as he could. I know the guy is doing all he can to balance out the network but he’s got one helluva battle ahead of him. I suggest to those reading this to do some research on Hudlin. The man is seriously on top of his game. BET on the contrary? Ehhhhh… let’s just say I’m thankful that Hudlin is there trying to make a change.
That question opened the floodgates to others inquisitions about the Viacom acquisition and how much influence it has in BET’s programming. Lee stated that Viacom has no influence on BET’s programming and said that the decisions made by BET are a combination of Lee, Hudlin and Senior VP Steven Hill. Whether I really believe that is hard to decipher because since the Viacom acquisition it does seem like BET has turned into a bootleg MTV to a certain extent. But the truth we may never know.
Regardless, the BET Awards turned out to be a pretty decent award show with the network paying homage to James Brown (Public Enemy killed it) and Gerald Levert (also done well with Patti Labelle, Chaka Khan, Yolanda Adams and other blessing the stage) being the high points of the evening.
I guess we’ll see what happens next at the 2nd installment of the BET Hip Hop Awards.
