BET Explains That “Shady” Prince Tribute Trailer
“There’s no such thing as a ‘comprehensive’ tribute to Prince.”
On Sunday night, Madonna and Stevie Wonder performed a special tribute to Prince at The Billboard Music Awards. There was fierce criticism of the performance — from the vocals, to the choice of the singers — and Questlove, who introduced Madonna, defended the tribute on Twitter. One of the voices of disproval came from BET, who in a moment of social media cleverness, tweeted out a trailer for their own Prince tribute that will take place at the annual BET Awards in June. In the trailer, a picture of Prince covered in raindrops appears, with the words, "Yeah, we saw that. Don't worry. We got you."
The internet seized the obvious moment and over 1000 articles included mentions of "BET shade" in the short hours after the initial tweet.
Over email, Stephen Hill, BET’s President of Programming told The FADER that their planned tribute will be a bit larger in scope than what Billboard had to offer.
“There’s no such thing as a “comprehensive” tribute to Prince." Hill wrote. "His music is too varied and vast; however, at the BET Awards on June 26, you can look forward to a multi-tiered, multi-generational, musician laden, expansive…and funky celebration of Prince’s music in line with our audience’s clear and expressed desires.”