The

Sunday's BET Awards were a four-hour celebration of black culture with a heavy emphasis on music.

The night was packed with live performances for Lotto and Jack Harlow, as well as surprise guests Mariah Carey and Brandy,

and featured a lavish tribute to Lifetime Achievement Award winner Sean Diddy Coals.

I'm Stephen Thompson, and today we are talking about the 2022 BET Awards on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

Joining us today is writer Keanufits Gerald Hey Keanu.

Hey Stephen.

It is such a pleasure to have you.

So the BET Awards call themselves Cultures Biggest Night.

They are designed to showcase black excellence with awards for music and movies and even sports.

But Sunday nights telecast placed a heavy emphasis on music with performances from Lizzo,

Chance the Rapper, Maverick City Music, Kirk Franklin, LMA, and many more.

The night's tribute to Sean Diddy Coals featured Jodhissy, Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans, Lil Kim,

and Diddy himself, among others.

Mariah Carey even turned up with a guest vocal in a performance by best new artist winner Lotto.

The awards themselves were secondary to the performances, to say the least.

In fact, in a four hour broadcast they only gave out about half of the awards and didn't even

bother to list the other winners on screen.

But televised winners included Silksonic, Jasmine Sullivan, The Weeknd, Mary J. Blige,

Tams WizKid, and Kirk Franklin.

The bigger news came in the run-up to Sunday nights awards as Lomas X protested

his exclusion from the nominations with a series of tweets,

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