BET had their awards show recently, and they hastily put together a tribute to Michael Jackson after his death, that several artists were to perform including Neyo, Jay Z, Dream and Chris Brown. However, Chris Brown was told by BET that he would not be able to perform.
According to those close to Brown, both Chris and his handlers practically begged BET to allow him to take part. Chris Brown grew up with MJ's music and considered him his idol. He wanted badly to take part in this tribute.
However, BET said no. And now it's coming out that the reason that Chris Brown was denied the ability to pay tribute, is that Jay Z himself told BET that if they allowed Chris to perform, then he (Jay Z) would not perform.
Now at first glance, you might say "good for Jay Z". I mean too little attention seems to go to the fact that Chris Brown did in fact beat up Rihanna. At the time he got a lot of criticism, but we tend to overlook things like that when someone has a talent such as athletics or music (see Kobe Bryant, R. Kelly, etc, etc, etc).
However there's a more serious aspect to this situation, that I'm not sure people are aware of. At what point does a company, in this case BET, decide that they're going to allow an artist to tell them how to run their company, and let that artist dictate policy?
I realize Jay Z is probably one of the more powerful artists out there. And him saying "I'm not going on if Chris performs" that would no doubt have repercussions as it pertains to ratings and the such.
But don't you take a stand somewhere?
I realize we're talking about BET and they sold their soul a LONG time ago. The network has embraced genocidal behavior and glorified it and built their reputation on it. There's nothing good on BET worth watching, for someone wanting to see healthy examples of African American life or culture. I mean, does anyone even REMEMBER that they refused to air a lot of rap videos that were positive in tone? Artists like Tribe Called Quest, Camp Lo and Brand Nubian among many many more, because they were deemed "irrelevant" to their demographics they were going after? Perhaps not enough killing and drug dealing and sex in their videos, I suppose.
Unless you want to see mindless drivel and reinforced negative stereotypes of African Americans as thugs and sexual deviants and objectifying of women, then there's no reason to even turn to that channel.
However, this goes to the larger idea of a company having standards. BET and MTV started out as a way for labels to market their artists. Artists would hope to get their videos played on these channels, and perhaps get to stop by one of their hip hop countdown shows to get their faces out there for promotion. Exposure. They needed BET and MTV to build their names.
However now that the names have been built up, it's like the inmates are running the asylum. This is no different than a magazine interviewing a subject, and that person saying they won't do the interview unless they get full editorial control. And then the Magazine folding like a deck of cards and giving that editorial control, thus not revealing anything the subject doesn't want.
I mean, look at just today's news. The Washington Post was setting up to sell access to it's reporters, and by extension their contacts in the White House for anywhere between 25,000 and 250,000. That would buy, "off the record, nonconfrontational access" to congressmen, members of Obama's administration and going so far as to offer the paper's own reporters and editors, according to a Politico article. That has since been cancelled after the uproar, but you get the point?
With the ascension of blogs in the culture now this is even more prevalent. And if it's not a publication sacrificing whatever journalistic integrity it might have had, it's a blog or a magazine selling it's soul and just putting out a total blowjob of an article in hopes of attracting an interview or an exclusive from that person in the future.
It's shameful. It reeks of selling out, and it's sad that companies like BET have zero integrity, zero honor, and absolutely NO SPINE in their backing down to Jay Z's threats.
Yeah, if Jay Z walked that would have hurt the awards ratings. But this is a tribute to Michael Jackson. This is the BET AWARDS SHOW, not the Jay Z Tribute. Not the JAY Z AWARDS SHOW.
When you sacrifice your integrity and parley that into favors, there's essentially only one thing you can honestly call yourself after that. A whore.
And that's what BET is. A whore.
Should Chris Brown have been allowed to perform? I dunno. I think he's a scumbag for beating on Rihanna no matter whether she hit him first or not. I'd like to see him get a lot more blowback for what he did than he has gotten. But if he wanted to perform at the tribute, and BET didn't have a problem (and they apparantly DIDN'T until Jay stepped in) then he should have gone on.
That decision is up to BET. or it SHOULD have been up to BET. They should never sacrifice their integrity (or what little they had left) by kowtowing to an artist that at one point was depending on them for promotion.
But that would take balls and a spine, two things BET seems to be in vastly short supply.
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