The numerous scuffles that took place at the 2012 BET Hip Hop Awards are still making headlines in the world of Hip Hop, and it looks like the controversy surrounding the show isn’t about to dissipate anytime soon. Now, in an interview with Complex, BET’s President of Music Programming and Specials Stephen Hill clarifies what actually went down behind the scenes.
Hill explained that much of the news about Young Jeezy and Rick Ross’ backstage brawl had been blown out of proportion by media outlets. He said that while Rozay and Jeezy’s crews did get into a minor scuffle, neither artist was directly involved. Furthermore, he added that there were absolutely no gunshots fired; that was simply a rumor that spun out of control due to Twitter.
“I think there’s a lot of misinformation that went out. For the Twitter Generation, 140 characters for some people just equals truth – no matter who it’s from, no matter where those people are – whatever you read on Twitter is true,” he said. “There was absolutely an altercation behind the stage, it involved the crews of Ross and Jeezy. Ross and Jeezy passed each other in the hall. There was some shoving – it never turned into a fight. They realized it’s an awards show. They realized we spend a lot of money to make hip-hop look good on TV. Maybe some members of the crew weren’t thinking that way. It was a dust-up, and it was over like that.”
He added, “You heard about gunshots in the parking lot because somebody heard somebody say something, and they carelessly tweeted. Now they may have heard pyro, but no one has said there was gunshots in the parking lot. Police would’ve closed this down a completely different way had there been gunshots. If there’s gunshots, your show’s not going on. Everything comes to a halt. Nothing came to a halt. Again, reckless tweeting.”
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Check out the full interview over at Complex.
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