Snubs & Surprises at the 2023 BET Awards

The BET Awards likes to call itself “Culture’s Biggest Night.” The 2023 edition, which aired on BET from the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday (June 25), may also have been Culture’s Longest Night. The show ran nearly four hours, with a well-deserved but overlong tribute to lifetime achievement award winner Busta Rhymes taking up at least a half-hour of that time.

The show was dominated by a 50th anniversary to hip-hop, a genre that has been celebrated almost non-stop since the Super Bowl LVI halftime show in February 2022.  Dozens of artists were featured in that salute. In addition, the show included performances from Ice Spice, Latto, Coco Jones, Doechii, GloRilla, Lil Uzi Vert and Patti LaBelle, who sang Tina Turner’s “The Best” in tribute to the rock legend who died last month.

Some of the winners were thoroughly expected. Burna Boy won best international act, which was basically a foregone conclusion, especially after his “Last Last” was nominated for the viewer’s choice award. (It was the only nominee in that category that wasn’t a No. 1 hit on the Hot 100.)

This was Burna Boy’s fourth win for best international act in the past five years. Other winners have won even more times in their categories at the BET Awards. This was Chris Brown’s seventh win for best male R&B/pop artist; Kirk Franklin’s seventh win for the Dr. Bobby Jones best gospel/inspirational award; and Kendrick Lamar’s sixth win for best male hip hop artist.

But not everything was predictable. The show also contained a fair share of snubs and surprises. Take a look: