Fat Joe is calling on Paramount to cancel the hip-hop award globally while still investing cash in other shows, and he is not in the sugar coating.
At one of his concerts on his “Joe and Jada” show, the Bronx legend rang out the network, thus plugging the plugs at the BET Hip Hop Awards and the Soul Train Awards, blaming the company’s greed, and what he calls “Gentrification.”
“It’s a gentrification form. The bet is a black community station, right? In the city culture. Our man, Bob Johnson, accepted the check. He sold it. First of all, a black billionaire. He sold it to Viacom and Paramount, MTV, MTV, MTV and them, VH1, VH1 and them,” Fat Joe explained. ”
To give some background, BET sold to Viacom in 2001 for about $3 billion. Bob Johnson became the first black billionaire history, but the deal changed the bet from a black-owned platform to a corporate product under Viacom, which later merged with CBS to form Paramount Global.
Now fast forward to 2025, BET CEO Scott Mills confirmed that the network’s Soul Train and Hip-Hop Awards are being suspended, and it is supposed that as cable continues to lose Steam, it is said to have “reimagined” the show on the new platform.
Fat Joe didn’t buy that. He has hosted the BET Hip Hop Awards for three consecutive years and said he has witnessed budget cuts firsthand.
“For years, they’ve been quietly gradually, they’ve been shooting a lot of people behind the scenes, and everybody 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 is just chopped, chopped, chopped, chopped, chopped,” Fat Joe said.
He noted that VMA is still paying them real money, and proved with Katy Perry’s performance in the air.
“Last year, I made my debut with Khaled at VMA, and Katy Perry is still flying through the air in the VMA,” Fat Joe said.
It’s not about him getting paid, Joe said, but about not having enough money to really get creative.
“them [the VMAs] You know, still have the budget, they get S ###. So, I think, in the entertainment world, they’ve been underfunded and you don’t have any money to get creative. That’s why you’re watching the ratchet prize. They don’t have bread,” Fat Joe said.
Meanwhile, the real reason for cost cuts is most likely to reduce fat, as Paramount merged with Skydance on Thursday (August 7) with a huge $8.4 billion deal and formed a new company called “Skydance Corporation Paramount.”
As part of the improvement, Paramount is negotiating the sale of BET to a group led by Scott Mills, about $160 to $1.7 million. If the bet is sold as part of the merger, no news has yet been made.
