![]() But award shows, through inclusion and exclusion, offer a useful lens through which to see how pop culture is framing the politics of the day. If black folk had relied on mainstream recognition to affirm our existence or accurately reflect our cultural contributions, we might be nearing extinction by now. That point of view has since taken root in the visual language of music videos suffused with an increasingly Afro-Surrealist bent. The surreal frequency of such videos, showing unsuspecting victims executed without the benefit of judge or jury, had already reached the point of absurdity. Two months earlier, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile had become the latest black men whose deaths at the hands of police sparked outrage after being captured on video. "The hosts were Black, the co-hosts were Black, the presenters were (mostly) Black, the performers were (mostly) Black, the winners were (mostly) Black, and even Kanye was (mostly) Black last night." Whether coincidence or consequence, it felt like the show had been programmed in defiance of the times. "I can't recall a Blacker time," Damon Young of the blog Very Smart Brothas wrote in his VMAs review the following day. It was one of those rare award shows where all the black artists who were supposed to win did, at a moment when Black America was practically dying to have its humanity acknowledged.įor a cable network whose beginnings were defined by charges of racism before breaking its own color barrier with Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" in 1983, this was peak blackness. A toned Teyana Taylor gave viewers a visual workout in the premiere of Ye's new video for "Fade." Beyoncé took home the most trophies by the night's end, including one for video of the year ("Formation"), after performing a 16-minute medley of songs from her groundbreaking visual album Lemonade. Seven years after crashing Taylor Swift's acceptance speech, Kanye West got seven uninterrupted minutes to ramble about Hollywood's incestuous web of fame and infamy, while shouting out his old girlfriend Amber Rose, his wife Kim Kardashian and her one-time fling Ray J. Rihanna performed a total of four times (not including her artful dodging of Drake's desperate attempt at a kiss while presenting her with the Video Vanguard Award). The Carters, Beyonc é and Jay-Z, are among the top nominees at the 2018 MTV VMAs.Ī couple of years ago, when viral videos of black death were all the rage in America, MTV rolled out one of the blackest Video Music Awards in the show's history.Ĭomedians Keegan-Michael Key & Jordan Peele co-hosted as faux social media influencers and in sketches parodying the most inane corners of Black Twitter.
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