BET Awards 2016 Recap

Disclaimer: Everything down below are my personal opinions. I'm in no way affiliated with any corporation, especially The BET Awards or BET. Thank you to BET and Billboard for the images!

PERFORMANCES

Beyonce. Giselle. Knowles. I think it was rude of her to do this to us. We didn't even know if she was showing up and gave us an iconic, perfect, killer performance. And then Kendrick came out. And then I lost all of my shit. "Freedom" is the type of song we need right now and it absolutely delivered. I felt out my seat to in front of the television set. I felt like I was at the Formation tour all over again. I almost threw out my back giving Beyonce my everything in front of that Sylvannia television set and don't regret a single step of it.

For y'all asking who Bibi Bourelly was (and shading her online) she's an amazing artist who went to my high school. She wrote multiple songs on Rihanna's "Anti" album (in addition to Bitch Better Have My Money). Young miss has her credentials.

Desiigner, wyd. I don't know the exact drugs he was on right before he went on stage, but...

Is it wrong for me to laugh at Alicia Keys so desperately grasping to stay relevant? No shade, I love her up and down and when she was at her peak she was unstoppable but I haven't seen it for anything she's done since 2010. I did live for this performance though (the rendition of her new song was awesome, I'm mad that's not the version on iTunes). I thought it was amazing how she was basically re-producing this song right in front of her face. But that speaker (or whatever) she threw down at the end costed more than my entire net worth so she tried that.

I have absolutely no problem with Bryson Tiller, I've tried to get into his music on multiple occasions (tonight being one of them) and his music (to me) sounds like random humming over trap beats. Cool, though, I'm glad for his success my friends love him

Future was...wait, I thought Future already performed Panda earlier?

Anderson .Paak. My friend loves this man. I'm not a diehard fan but I do really like his music and his performance was mighty fine.

Usher's performance via Skype wasn't horrible. He's still a beast dancer, I just really wish his vocals were not live. I know I dog singers for not singing live at award shows but they get a pass if they're dancers because while the vocals weren't where I would appreciate the to be, the rest of the performance was cool and trippy.

Chloe x Halle's vocals were absolutely out of this world. And the fact that they kept popping out genre after genre had me GOINGGG.

AWARDS

I didn't know Future and Drake were a "group" but, okay. It's actually funny because I didn't realize that BET had so many non-groups in the groups category for about twenty minutes because I was still so high off that Beyonce/Kendrick performance.

I didn't watch "Creed" but the sheer annoyance of no Oscar nomination was made up with Michael Bae Jordan's win.

Best New Artist/Best Male R&B/Pop were both Bryson Tiller and both times I wanted at least two others in the category to win. But like I said before, congratulations on his success because people seem to love him.

I'm not going to say a thing about Taraji P. Henson aside from congratulations on a well deserved "Best Female Actor Award". All the actresses in that category won to me, that was the one category where I was familiar with all of their work and respected all of them (lol). That being said (yeah, I'm saying something else), Taraji tried every fuck out of me because, me, personally...I got my mother fucking male black ass all the way in Formation on June 10th, 2016 from 8 pm to 11 pm. I was there for BEE-YON-SAY. It wouldn't have been so bad if they didn't stretch the script out so long for her but damn it was like an hour of just saying "Oh honey oh no gotta get her some Lemonade, blah blah blah". I broke my back, my voice and my feet dancing for her at the Ravens Stadium. Congrats, Taraji, but you tried me personally. (Still love you down, mama)

Best video: Formation. The entire time they were announcing the nominees I wondered why they even bothered because if Bey didn't win, I was leaving the room and turning to another channel (one that wasn't playing this show because Viacom had this airing EVERYWHERE. They interrupted their nonstop Victorious marathons over at Teennick, girl!). The best part of this was the reveal that Beyonce pulled the second most iconic move of 2016. She snatched however many million wigs and took them on the plane with her straight to London the second they cut to commercial after she performed and got her mama up there to accept it for her. Twice. But the second time she got up I was glad because she gave us all a WORD. And basically said y'all still ain't givin' my daughter enough, which is true I can always give more to Beyonce no matter where I am in life. Celebrate the legends while they're still alive! 

Speaking of a word, Jesse Williams gave us a word. I just thought he was that lightskin man from Greys Anatomy but this really shifted my perception of him because he came out with word after word after word all while retaining all the swag, that smirk and chewing his gum. I also thought his face anytime anyone gave him a shout out was hilarious. He's just here for the black people to prevail and I have to give him his props. Respect.

PRINCE TRIBUTES

BET showed up and showed out for the multiple tributes they had for him. Erika Badu's first note was better than the entire Billboard tribute. Bilal came through for us so hard that he surely passed away, shook Prince's ghost's hand and got his own spirit flung back into his lifeless body because he put his foot in that performance (and his entire body, clearly).

Tori Kelly was flawless, Stevie played a mean keyboard and JHUD gave us her absolute everything with that performance of "Purple Rain". Mama sang from every part of her body and I lived for every second of it. The mic wasn't even close to her face and you could still her her voice crystal loud an clear. Hell, I heard her voice all the way in Maryland. Maxwell's entire performance of "Nothing Compares 2 U" was just an @ to Madonna. Janelle Mo'Slay was absolutely stunning, so was Sheila E. The reason why I'm grouping those two together is because you could just see it on their faces and it pulsating through their veins. Their love for music, their love for Prince. It just absolutely electrified the stage, the audience, and all of our couches at home. That's the difference between these tributes and the Billboard tribute, these arists were truly doing these performances FOR Prince.

Misc

Six years and BET is STILL trying to make Terrence J happen.

I wonder how much extra they paid poor MC Lyte to smile this year. I died when she didn't even look up to the camera at one point she was reading her script right in front of us. Did she make some blood oath to BET or something?

"Miles! Go head! Start talking!" I died for that little boy.

Karruche's face changes every time I see her. I never know what she looks like.

I wish the presenters would spend more time talking about the nominees and less time with this scripted stuff. It was so painful to watch. At one point poor Gabrielle Union stopped for 3 minutes waiting for that damn teleprompter to catch up.

Why did we see Anthony Anderson's whole entire ass?

I did not appreciate the overuse of the word "lit".

Tracee and Anthony are such good comedians and naturally funny people that they brought a lot of their dull script to life.

AWARD SHOW GRADE: A-