ZCZC
BFF-24
ENTERTAINMENT-US-MUSIC-FILM-AWARD-BET
Freed Mill takes on police brutality at BET Awards
LOS ANGELES, June 25, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Rapper Meek Mill, free after a
controversial jail sentence, returned to the stage Sunday with a vigorous
attack on police brutality as he premiered a song at the BET Awards.
The awards of Black Entertainment Television, broadcast live from Los
Angeles, recognize the best of African American music and film and the
blockbuster “Black Panther” won Best Movie.
Mill was one of the night’s most memorable performers as he debuted his
song “Stay Woke.” The 31-year-old rapper in April won his freedom five months
after a judge jailed him over violations of probation stemming from a 2008
arrest, a decision that triggered protests charging that it was overly harsh
and racially biased.
Mill performed “Stay Woke” on a set designed as a street scene in his
native Philadelphia — a neighborhood that is unkempt yet also full of life
with children playing.
Police swarm onto the scene with force and a shot is heard. The song pauses
and a little girl who was jumping rope is revealed to have been killed, her
body then draped with an American flag.
“How can I pledge allegiance to the flag / When they killing all our sons
and dads?” Mill raps. The singer Miguel contributes the chorus, which says,
“Though it was designed for us to lose / Nothing, nothing, nothing’s
impossible / Believe it, we’re still undefeated.”
Nicki Minaj put on the raciest and perhaps most physically grueling
performance of the night as she sported a skin-tight latex red dress,
emerging with a dancing squad from a smoke-filled Chinese archway for her
martial arts-themed song “Chun-Li.”
She crawled while twerking on stage and spread her legs to the sky in a
medley that transitioned to her song “Rich Sex” and also featured YG, 2
Chainz and Big Sean.
While many of the music awards were presented off camera, hard-living trap
trio Migos won Best Group and the R&B singer and emerging feminist icon SZA
took Best New Artist.
– Honoring ‘Spiderman,’ young activist –
The BET Awards presented a special “humanitarian heroes” award to six
people including Mamoudou Gassama, the Malian migrant in Paris who saved a
child hanging off a balcony by scaling an apartment block with his bare
hands.
Gassama, who smiled and saluted the crowd in Los Angeles, was nicknamed
“Spiderman” and awarded French residency even though he was in the country
illegally.
Other award recipients included Naomi Wilder, the 11-year-old who gained
wide attention with her poised speech before the March for Our Lives in
Washington urging more attention to violence against women of color, and
Anthony Borges, the high school student in Parkland, Florida who took five
bullets as he rescued 20 classmates during the February massacre.
Award presenter John Legend, the singer known for his left-wing activism,
contrasted the winners’ actions with the politics of President Donald Trump’s
administration including separations of migrant children from arrested
parents.
“We honor these heroes and thank them for giving us hope and reminding us
that everyone has an opportunity to do something extraordinary,” Legend said.
“Black Panther,” the superhero movie about a fictional African king that
has become the third highest-grossing film ever in North America,
unsurprisingly took the top prize for cinema.
Actor Jamie Foxx, the BET Awards’ host, made a subtle dig at Trump as he
hailed the film: “We don’t need a president right now, because we’ve got a
king.”
BSS/AFP/MR/ 1203 hrs