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Fat Joe shared his thoughts about what happened to the Hip Hop and Soul Train Awards after BET announced that the network had suspended both award shows.
On Thursday, August 8, Joey Crack reacted to the news on his and Jadakiss' podcast, Joe & Jada. The Terror Squad founder, who hosted the Hip Hop Awards for the last three years, believes there's a scheme behind the scenes that may have led to the network's decision.
“This is a form of gentrification," Joe argued. "BET came up as a community station for black people, right? In urban culture."
“And our man, Bob Johnson, took the check. He sold it. First black billionaire," he continued. "He sold it to Viacom and Paramount, MTV and them, VH1 and them. Little by little over the years, quietly, they’ve been firing a lot of people behind the scenes in BET and everybody who has something to say, they’ve been firing them. And I know because I’ve been working on the BET Hip-Hop Awards for three years. The budget, not for me, but the budget just kept getting chopped and chopped and chopped."
Later, Fat Joe brought up his experience working with other entities associated with Paramount like MTV. The network was recently sold to Skydance for $8 billion. The merger created a new company called "Paramount, A Skydance Corporation.” Amid talks about the merger, Joe believes the higher-ups were purposely underfunding channels like BET while other brands like MTV still had budgets to be creative.
“[The VMAs] still got the budgets, they got the s**t, you know," Joe added. "And so, I think, in the entertainment world, they kept underfunding them and you ain’t got no money to be creative. That’s why you was watching the Ratchet Awards. They ain’t had no bread."
Watch Fat Joe and Jadakiss' full reaction below.