The west coast rap legend Snoop Dogg hosted the tenth annual BET Hip-Hop Awards, bringing some of the genre’s most prominent, as well as up-and-coming, artists together. This was Snoop’s third year in a row hosting the show.
The awards show made the same mistake many other big award shows are recently starting to make; not presenting all of the awards on TV. The BET Hip-Hop Awards left out some of the biggest awards, like MVP of the Year, Album of the Year and Best Lyricist.
MVP of the Year went to Drake, who had an incredibly stunning year. According to senior Dini Mohamud, he definitely deserved the award.
“Drake deserved to win MVP because this year he did drop a lot of good music,” Mohamud said.
The show started with a performance by rapper Future, who performed two of his biggest songs from this year, “Where Ya At” and “March Madness.” His performances hyped up the crowd of the Atlanta Civic Center.
Snoop came out and rebranded himself again, calling himself Uncle Snoop. He played small samples of some of the biggest hits of the year, like Drake’s Meek Mill diss track “Back to Back” and Kendrick Lamar’s powerful single “Alright”.
The Best Club Banger award was announced, and GOOD Music rapper Big Sean’s song “IDFWU” won. The show followed up with the first cypher of the night, featuring young artists Charles Hamilton, Jackie Spade, Joyner Lucas and Tink.
Fetty Wap won the Who Blew Up Award (given to the best newcomer to the genre), and deserved the win. His two biggest songs of the year, “Trap Queen” and “My Way” (the latter becoming much more famous after Drake added a verse to it), and self-titled album Fetty Wap, brought him a lot of attention.
Senior David Park believes that Fetty Wap deserves the award.
“He brought a new style to the rap game,” Park said. “When you hear Fetty rap, you know it’s Fetty.”
Fetty Wap also won Best Track of the Year for “Trap Queen,” a surprising choice, as he beat songs like “Alright” by Lamar and “Blessings” by Big Sean.
Freshman Amar Daad believes that Fetty Wap deserved this win over the other rappers.
“It was right because it’s catchy and has a better flow than the other songs on the list,” Daad said. “I’ve heard the other songs too many times already.”
Another slightly unexpected win was the Album of the Year award going to J. Cole’s album 2014 Forest Hills Drive. The album beat out big favorites of the year, such as Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly.
Senior Ananda Poudel respects J. Cole winning, but wishes it was someone else.
“I think that Kendrick deserved to win Album of the Year but I am happy for J. Cole,” Poudel said. “Cole managed to get his album platinum without any features.”
Puff Daddy and the Family performed a brand new song of theirs, marking the return of Puff Daddy (who has also gone by the names P. Diddy and Sean Combs) to the rap game. King Los is the new addition to the “family,” receiving much attention after his freestyle on the famous rap radio program “Sway in the Morning.”
Combs also performed his newest song, “Workin.'” At the end, several of his friends from Bad Boy Records, Combs’ own record label, came out to perform the song with him.
Overall, the show was very entertaining. Other than the fact that they didn’t present the most important awards, they did a great job by getting hot artists such as Travis Scott and Rich Homie Quan to perform.