Politics took center stage at the BET Awards

From a phone call with Vice President Kamala Harris to quips about “Black jobs,” Sunday’s BET Awards, one of Black culture’s biggest stages, didn’t shy away from politics — and the volatile November election.

Harris appeared in a video chat with host Taraji P. Henson during the show and stressed the importance of voting in the election to protect voting rights, reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights and to combat gun violence.

“There is so much at stake in this moment. The majority of us believe in freedom and equality, but these extremists, as they say, ‘they not like us,’” Harris said, referring to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”

Henson then made a hip-hop reference of her own: “They out here tryna take away Pride, Plan B and Planned Parenthood but protecting pistols. If you ask me, they pushin’ the wrong Ps,” she said, nodding to Gunna, Young Thug and Future’s 2022 hit, “pushin P.”

That follows several months of political actions from hip-hop and R&B artists like Sexyy Red, Kehlani and Ot7 Quanny, while Donald Trump and Joe Biden use hip-hop and its artists to court young Black voters. Candidates have often worked with artists to appeal to voters, and Black musicians have long weighed in on politics. But now, with some Black voters shifting support from Biden to Trump, hip-hop’s potential influence on the election can’t be ignored, said Corey Miles, an associate professor of sociology and Africana studies at Tulane University.

“I do think those types of political moments are needed in part because we’ve always done political things in the cultural sphere,” Miles said.

He did, however, acknowledge that overtly political messages on stages such as the BET Awards can sometimes fall flat: “I do think artists with wordplay, I do think comedians, I do think folks who host shows can use their individual talents to offer really nuanced critiques.”

Trump has garnered support from Sexyy Red, Lil Wayne, Kodak Black and Ye in recent years. Last month, Trump continued his campaign strategy to turn rappers into surrogates in his presidential election bid. He invited rapper Sada Baby to join him at a Black voter outreach event in Detroit in June. The same month Trump was seen in Philadelphia with local rapper Ot7 Quanny. The artists praised Trump for issuing presidential pardons to rappers and for signing stimulus checks distributed during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump’s embrace of rappers and their apparent support of him appear to be ramping up as polls suggest younger Black voters are showing more openness to Trump.

Meanwhile, Biden tapped into the fervor over Lamar’s rap beef with Drake in May with a diss video against Trump set to Lamar’s “Euphoria.”

“It’s always been about love and hate now lemme say I’m the biggest hater,” reads the first slide in a string of photos of both Trump and Biden with Harris. “I hate the way that you walk over women’s rights. The way that you talk about immigrants. I hate the way that you dress. I hate the way that you sneak diss on Truth Social”

Months earlier, in March, Biden appeared in photos smiling with rapper Glorilla at the White House.

“I believe there are rappers who are very explicitly stating their politics and where they stand,” said A.D. Carson, a professor of hip-hop and the Global South at the University of Virginia. “And then there are rappers who are playing the pop culture game. One of the ways that popularity is gauged is viral moments, and these politicians understand that very well. It’s mutually beneficial.”

A recent NBC News poll found that 2 in 3 Black voters ages 18 to 49 support Biden, along with a majority of Black voters 50 and over. One in 4 young Black voters, and just 6% of older Black voters, support Trump.

It’s no surprise, then, that politics made its way into the BET Awards. Comedian B. Simone poked fun at Trump’s recent “Black jobs” remark at the presidential debate, and rapper Vic Mensa joined influencers Lynae Vanee and Speedy Morman for a PSA encouraging people to vote. Later in the show, Henson urged viewers to vote and alluded to a law in Grants Pass, Oregon, recently upheld by the Supreme Court, that punishes homeless people for sleeping on public property. She also condemned Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint for a second Trump term that would increase presidential power over the federal government.

“I’m not trying to scare us,” Henson said Sunday night. “I’m trying to inform us. We got three Supreme Court seats up, you guys. We need those seats or we have no protection. I’m talking to all the mad people that don’t want to vote. You going to be mad about a lot of things if you don’t vote.”

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