Kanye West Received BET Honors’ Visionary Award After An Awkward Speech By Damon Dash
Kanye West Received BET Honors' Visionary Award After An Awkward Speech By Damon Dash
Kanye West was awarded BET Honors’ Visionary Award at a ceremony last night, and he was introduced with an awkward speech by former associate Damon Dash. The beef between the two goes back almost fifteen years, after Kanye sided with Jay Z when he left Roc-A-Fella, which Dash had founded with Jay. The ice between them seems to have thawed in recent years, though, which means that it wasn’t entirely out of the left field for Dash to present the award to Kanye last night. But he did manage to get a dig in, saying that he still has issues with the man, but that “they’re emotional” and that his “history with Kanye is I didn’t respect him as a rapper because I was around the greatest rappers … but he has courage.” Kanye, of course, also gave his own speech, and addressed Dash indirectly: “I understand how it feels to be humbled.” The award ceremony will air on BET on 2/29, so we’ll be able to hear Kanye’s full speech then, but check below for a list of tweets and Instagram videos from the event.
Creativity is a fight. You can't be the kid in the back of the room being made fun of. Get up and smack somebody – Kanye west #BETHonors
— Antonio Williams (@Tony_Williams) January 25, 2015
"You can't be the kid in the back of the classroom w black nail polish. U have to smack the shit out of people with your creativity" -Kanye
— veronica toney (@vptwritenow) January 25, 2015
They say white girls go out and get a rich black dude. But my wife dated broke black dudes. So it's not about the money – Kanye #BETHonors
— Antonio Williams (@Tony_Williams) January 25, 2015
Dame Dash, Dash's daughter and Kanye take a selfie before exiting the stage. Will that make the taping?
— veronica toney (@vptwritenow) January 25, 2015
A video was also shown featuring appearances from Jay Z, Kendrick Lamar, Common, and Kim Kardashian. And before receiving the award, Kanye went up to freestyle with Charlie Wilson:
In other Kanye news, he explained why he never smiles in photos during a speech at the inaugural Fashion Los Angeles Awards:
Back when I was working on Yeezus, I saw this book from the 1800s and it was velvet-covered with brass and everything,” West said. “I looked at all these people’s photos and they look so real and their outfits were incredible and they weren’t smiling and people, you know the paparazzi, always come up to me, ‘Why you not smiling?’ and I think, not smiling makes me smile … When you see paintings in an old castle, people are not smiling cause it just wouldn’t look as cool.
He previously expressed this sentiment on Twitter:
not smiling makes me smile
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) October 11, 2014
