Don't Hate on the BET Awards - They're Valuable

OK, so August Alsina cried kind of hard at the BET Awards. Harder than anyone was really ready for that early in the show, but let’s cut him a little bit of slack. For most in the R&B/hip hop community, the BET Award is the most celebrated award they’ll receive in honor of their craft (at least for a while anyway). Award Shows like the American Music Awards (AMAs), the Billboard Awards, the Video Music Awards (VMAs) and lets not forget the Grammys, have slim to no Black recognition on their winners’ lists. Does anyone see a Mack Wilds or Juicy J receiving a Grammy sometime soon?

So let’s not be too hard on August. Awards provide a form of validation for just about anything. And for an artist, they confirm that their journey has been worth it—that they’re good enough. Plus, the entire industry is really looking at him now and those who didn’t know who he was before are now paying attention.

We don’t really need to ask why we’re not more prominently represented as winners as opposed to just nominees on bigger award shows but aside from some underlying currents, the massive amounts of gyrating, expletives and bad behavior of people like Lil Wayne (who smacked the microphone so hard, it broke and the presenter had to hold it while reading the teleprompter) is a good indication of how wild some folks can get at these events.

So while most people rag on BET for lacking quality programming, we should also thank the network for providing our people with a platform to be celebrated and to get this all out of our system.