The title "2012 BET Hip Hop Awards" is pretty telling here because you get four crucial things in these few words, namely the year it is from, the channel station behind it, the genre focus and that it is an awards show. Well, sort of. It did not really feel like an awards show, but I will get to that later. As for BET, I am most of the time a bit cricial when it comes to them and a ceremony focusing mostly on people of a certain ethnicity and skin color because shutting out everybody else is nothing to be proud of and goes strongly against the concept of quality. Yes, racism does not only go one direction. But honestly I think this is a bigger problem with the BET Awards than with the BET Hip Hop Awards and I don't really want to go into detail about that right now. Besides, if you look long and closely enough, you will also find White people as part of this show. This even usually runs for approximately 1.5 hours and this was also the case almost a decade ago back in 2012 as it clocked in around the 85-minute mark. Solid running time. No need to stretch it any further, especially because commercial also are added to the original broadcast, so that one went for almost two hours and it should not be more than that. One of the White people would be the godfather of awwards show direction Glenn Weiss with all his Emmy wins. Of course, he is never seen during the broadcast, but he sure is a legend. This cannot really be said about any of the six writers here. May sound like a lot half a dozen for under 90 minutes, but it is not unusual at all for these awards shows, especially BET awards shows. They always have really many in charge of the planning. Alright, as you can see form my rating I was not too happy with this edition we got here. Many reasons for that. One would be that Snnoop Dogg is only really briefly included this time. He hosted this event in the past and he is always a riot. I know, very specific reason, but still. Another would be the messed-up beginning. I mean it gets better as the show goes on, but the first minutes were almost unwatchable. Like I am never really a big fan of an all-in opening with a (rap) song being played since second one. It lacks in class and dignity if we don't get to see a host and a brief hello at the very start. Then again, class and dignity may not exactly be what this show is going for in the first place. More about street cred perhaps. Things got worse immediately after. This was the year when Obama went for his (successful) reelection and that happened after less than 1.5 months after this show we have here. So what they do? They took a Black actor (who by the way looked nothing like Obama, talk about stereotypes) and put him there and have him say he is Obama and people must vote for him again. I am generally not a big fan of politics being part of awards shows, but here it was especially uncreative and pathetic. Things stayed this way. I liked Anthony Anderson on L&O at least (not so much on his career-defining comedy show), but no clue why he is here as he is not a hip hop artist. This is where the color factor comes into play in a disrespectful manner. They would not have put Matthew McConaughey there.
Alright, early on I mentioned already that I struggle with seeing this as an awards show. It is all about the music. One stage performance after the next, one music clip after the next etc. It may be nice for those in the crowd there, but not for people who watch this at home. This goes too much against the concept of awards shows, especially if the few awards handed out during the broadcast are nonsense categories like "People's Champ Award". We can watch concert DVDs for the rest. It is as if you are supposed to write an exam at school on the subject of Beethoven and instead write about Mozart. Not sure if this parallel fits. Or let's say you are supposed to write an essay about Beethoven's life and all you hand in is a stick with some of his music. Task not fulfilled. Missed the topic as you would call it at school/university. Besides, most of the stage performances here left me really unimpressed. The one thing I actually liked more were these clips in-between, in black-and-white. Just with a group of artists (including a British chipmunk) standing there and performing. I mean it was a bit pathetic when one rabled on about Al-Quaeda as it was probably supposed to make him seem gangster, but it just wasn't working. Admittedly he was not the worst from the gang as the one who really hit rock bottom was the boy rapping about Clint Eastwood and his chair. Maybe achieve 1% of Eastwood's successes first before you take a shot at him, kid? Interestingly enough, the pretty young Iggy Azalea (here still called Iggy Azaelia) was featured here as well. Before her breakthrough. And another woman in one of the clips was one who actually had her breakthrough already a long, long time before 2012, namely Eve. Another moment in the spotlight for her. One positive thing about this show is that it featured really many big names. Kanye West may not have been there, even if he won an award, but pretty much everybody else was. This also showed during the final stage performance, a tribute to an executive who died approximately a month earlier from (alleged) suicide. There they brought out the big guns (no pun intended). A bit unusual though, but his impact on the industry must have been massive, so maybe my loss that I did not really know the name. I think something similar at the Oscars or so, such a lengthy tribute for a producer, unless it is an actor-producer like Pitt, Spacey or DiCaprio, would never happen I'm sure. Okay, what else is there to say about this one. I thing the opening made it impossible for me here to give more than one star out of five. Had this been better or left out (especially the cringeworthy Obama parody), then I maybe would have given two out of five. Annother thing I do not like about these BET awards shows is that they are always heavily commercialized and as there are still commercial breaks, I just find it very inappropriate. Greed prevails I suppose. Makes the companies featured in here also not exactly stand in a positive light. One ould be Sprite that we see in these vintage b&w clips and of course the bottle is in color, so it even has a negative aspect on the entire scene because it is such an atmosphere-breaking moment, even if it is super short. Nothing to be proud of at all. But I am sure that with all the money they got for these inclusions, they can deal with getting the lowest possible rating from me here. Absolutely not a good watch and I wonder if female rights advocates and online white knight warriors would be all up in arms if this was a more recent awards show with a moment when one male Black character orders a female White character to leave the stage and go back to her strip club and she, with no word of objection, follows the order. I mean it was all in good humor, but people tend to be sensitive flakes at times. Or maybe the man's color still makes it okay, but all hell would have broken loose if he wasn't a Black fella and if it had been the other way around color-wise. At least the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were there, even if the costumes could have looked cooler for sure. A bit on the cheap side and I suppose this it not where the Sprite money bent, but instead into some dark and deep pockets. But still these slightly okay moments were immediately made up for in a negative sense by terrible moments like RZA (I respect the man as an artist, but come on) shamelessly promoting his new movie for way too long. So no matter what perspective you take here, this show was a massive failure. They got it all wrong back in 2012, most of all that nobody really cared anymore at all about who gets an award. Negtive deal breaker galore. One of many. Highly not recommended.
Alright, early on I mentioned already that I struggle with seeing this as an awards show. It is all about the music. One stage performance after the next, one music clip after the next etc. It may be nice for those in the crowd there, but not for people who watch this at home. This goes too much against the concept of awards shows, especially if the few awards handed out during the broadcast are nonsense categories like "People's Champ Award". We can watch concert DVDs for the rest. It is as if you are supposed to write an exam at school on the subject of Beethoven and instead write about Mozart. Not sure if this parallel fits. Or let's say you are supposed to write an essay about Beethoven's life and all you hand in is a stick with some of his music. Task not fulfilled. Missed the topic as you would call it at school/university. Besides, most of the stage performances here left me really unimpressed. The one thing I actually liked more were these clips in-between, in black-and-white. Just with a group of artists (including a British chipmunk) standing there and performing. I mean it was a bit pathetic when one rabled on about Al-Quaeda as it was probably supposed to make him seem gangster, but it just wasn't working. Admittedly he was not the worst from the gang as the one who really hit rock bottom was the boy rapping about Clint Eastwood and his chair. Maybe achieve 1% of Eastwood's successes first before you take a shot at him, kid? Interestingly enough, the pretty young Iggy Azalea (here still called Iggy Azaelia) was featured here as well. Before her breakthrough. And another woman in one of the clips was one who actually had her breakthrough already a long, long time before 2012, namely Eve. Another moment in the spotlight for her. One positive thing about this show is that it featured really many big names. Kanye West may not have been there, even if he won an award, but pretty much everybody else was. This also showed during the final stage performance, a tribute to an executive who died approximately a month earlier from (alleged) suicide. There they brought out the big guns (no pun intended). A bit unusual though, but his impact on the industry must have been massive, so maybe my loss that I did not really know the name. I think something similar at the Oscars or so, such a lengthy tribute for a producer, unless it is an actor-producer like Pitt, Spacey or DiCaprio, would never happen I'm sure. Okay, what else is there to say about this one. I thing the opening made it impossible for me here to give more than one star out of five. Had this been better or left out (especially the cringeworthy Obama parody), then I maybe would have given two out of five. Annother thing I do not like about these BET awards shows is that they are always heavily commercialized and as there are still commercial breaks, I just find it very inappropriate. Greed prevails I suppose. Makes the companies featured in here also not exactly stand in a positive light. One ould be Sprite that we see in these vintage b&w clips and of course the bottle is in color, so it even has a negative aspect on the entire scene because it is such an atmosphere-breaking moment, even if it is super short. Nothing to be proud of at all. But I am sure that with all the money they got for these inclusions, they can deal with getting the lowest possible rating from me here. Absolutely not a good watch and I wonder if female rights advocates and online white knight warriors would be all up in arms if this was a more recent awards show with a moment when one male Black character orders a female White character to leave the stage and go back to her strip club and she, with no word of objection, follows the order. I mean it was all in good humor, but people tend to be sensitive flakes at times. Or maybe the man's color still makes it okay, but all hell would have broken loose if he wasn't a Black fella and if it had been the other way around color-wise. At least the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were there, even if the costumes could have looked cooler for sure. A bit on the cheap side and I suppose this it not where the Sprite money bent, but instead into some dark and deep pockets. But still these slightly okay moments were immediately made up for in a negative sense by terrible moments like RZA (I respect the man as an artist, but come on) shamelessly promoting his new movie for way too long. So no matter what perspective you take here, this show was a massive failure. They got it all wrong back in 2012, most of all that nobody really cared anymore at all about who gets an award. Negtive deal breaker galore. One of many. Highly not recommended.
