bigted Posted September 9, 2005 Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With Little Brother's The Minstrel Show hitting stores next week, SOHH.com has heard BET is refusing to air the album's first video, "Lovin' It" because it is "too intelligent for the BET audience." The video begins with a delivery truck dropping boxes labeled "gangsta," "backpackers," "earthy" and "icy" onto a street. The rest of the clip mostly sees LB and Joe Scudda, who is also featured on the song, performing in front of a capacity crowd. The clip also pokes fun at the Hip-Hop subgenres by depicting overly exaggerated backpackers and gangtas characters in the audience. "Lovin' It" also jokingly features typical scenes with Big Pooh sitting next to champagne-sipping models in the venue's VIP section while LB's entourage pop bottles. The video concludes with a car running through the boxes dropped on the street earlier. The statement of the video being "too intelligent for the BET audiece" was discussed recently on Columbia University's college radio station, 89.9 hosted by Timmhotep Aku. Aku says this statement was made verbatim by the program director from BET to one of the Atlantic records label reps. SOHH.com contacted several officials at BET, including their vice president Stephen Hill, their program director, and publicist, Michael Llewellen who offered this response. "It's not true, not in that context. BET reserves the right to show or not to show music videos of any type based on the network's own standards and decision-making processes," Llewellyn told SOHH.com. When questioned further as to whether the words "too intelligent for the BET audience" was used, Llewellen did not respond. Atlantic Records has refused to comment. The LB incident doesn't mark the first time BET has allegedly banned underground artists from its video rotation. In December 2004, SOHH.com reported that BET snubbed De La Soul's "Shopping Bags" video and The Beatnuts' "Find Us (In the Back of the Club)" clip featuring Akon. In a meeting with BET heads, De La reportedly said BET told them they "weren't relevant to the BET audience" while The Beatnuts were told that "BET doesn't break new artists." The Beatnuts had previously garnered heavy rotation for videos like "Off The Books" from 1997's Stone Crazy, "Watch Out Now" from 1999's A Musical Massacre and "No Escapin This" off 2001's Take It or Squeeze It. The network has also been under fire from the black community for cutting its news coverage to make room for more videos in the past few years. Recently, the community has been frustrated with BET for its failure to cover the Hurricane Katrina's crisis. Little Brother's The Minstrel Show featuring "Lovin' It" hits stores September 13th. http://www.sohh.com/images/icons/end_story.gif Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaxFly Posted September 9, 2005 Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 BET simultaneously dissed their audience and exposed themselves. Good to see they are covering all their bases... :therain: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigted Posted September 9, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 I wonder if "Party Starter"'s too smart for BET? It still ain't on the list to be on 106 & Park when it's been 2 days already since they premiered it on there, they usually put 50 Cent videos on the list for you to vote the minute it gets premiered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Hero1 Posted September 9, 2005 Admin Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 I think if a rapper uses a 3 syllable word its "too smart for the bet audience" at the minute accordin to the execs :davidblaine: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frenetic Posted September 9, 2005 Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 yeah, i posted info about a couple of weeks ago. needs to be investigated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigted Posted September 9, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 Well I guess they only wanna attract 12 year olds to watch them! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfuqua23 Posted September 9, 2005 Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 That is totally ridiculous. BET and MTV shouldn't be the only game in town. We need a new broadcast channel of music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TopDawg14 Posted September 9, 2005 Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 This is of no surprise to me. BET is a part of the industry that is seeking to dumb down its audience. It's all politics and bottom line. You have to kiss butt and dumb your lyrics to get airplay on radio and TV. Yeah, you'll get a Kanye or a Lauryn Hill to slip through the cracks from time to time but the reality is that nonsense rules the day in music. BET is getting a lot of heat for its programming. I don't really watch BET anymore since its news department was gutted. It's really a shame because some people will look at BET and use it as a representation of black people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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