THE 2022 BET Awards’ conclusion saw great performances, and greater wins by nominees, some more surprising than others.
Dominating the song charts for the past year, The Weeknd easily took the Best Male R&B/Pop Artist award, while the Silk Sonic duo of Bruno Mars and Anderson.Paak naturally took home the awards for Best Group and Album of the Year for An Evening With Silk Sonic.
Though Kendrick Lamar had released an album in the middle of May, the album failed to receive a nomination, but the rapper somehow won the Best Male Hip Hop Artist award instead, while the music video Lamar did with his cousin Baby Keem for the son Family Ties nabbed them the Video of the Year award.
Despite the incident at this year’s Oscars, Will Smith has somehow been recognised again, as the actor nabbed the Best Actor award for his performance in King Richard, while the film also won the Best Movie award.
On the female entertainment side, Zendaya’s performance in Euphoria and Spider-Man: No Way Home nabbed her the Best Actress award. For the music spectrum, Megan Thee Stallion and Jazmine Sullivan walked away with the Best Female Hip Hop Artist and Best Female R&B/Pop Artist awards, respectively.
A big drama surrounding this year’s BET Awards leading up to and continuing after it, were the lack of nominations for hip hop artist Lil Nas X.
“Thank you, BET Awards. An outstanding zero nominations. Black excellence!” X succinctly wrote on a since-deleted Twitter post when the 2022 BET Award nominations were revealed earlier in June, which showed the organisation not recognising Lil Nas X’s latest album Montero or its singles.
In a statement on June 7, the BET Awards responded to him, saying they love him and that he was nominated in 2020, but was not nominated this year by BET’s Voting Academy, which is comprised of nearly 500 entertainment professionals.”
Three days before the show, Lil Nas X released the music video for “Late to da Party”, where he is seen urinating on a trophy tossed into a toilet, saying, “**** BET.”
At the awards show, fellow artist and collaborator Jack Harlow arrived in support of Lil Nas X by wearing a T-shirt of the latter.
