Fat Joe Says BET Killing Hip-Hop & Soul Train Awards Is “Gentrification” and Underfunding Our Culture on Purpose

BET just broke the hearts of music lovers everywhere by announcing the suspension of its Hip-Hop Awards and Soul Train Awards — and Fat Joe is not holding his tongue about it.

On his Joe & Jada podcast with Jadakiss, Joey Crack called the move a direct result of gentrification and years of underfunding Black culture.

“BET, this is a form of gentrification, what’s going on right now,” Fat Joe said, as captured by The Art of Dialogue. “BET came up as a community station for Black people and urban culture. Our man Bob Johnson sold it to Viacom and Paramount… MTV and VH1. Little by little, they been firing a lot of people behind the scenes and chopping the budget.”

Joe says he’s seen it firsthand while working on the BET Hip-Hop Awards for the past three years.

“The budget — not for me — but for the show kept getting chopped and chopped. Meanwhile, over at the VMAs, Katy Perry flying through the air, cannons going off… they still got the budgets.”

The Bronx legend believes this slow stripping of resources killed creativity and left the shows looking “ratchet” not because of the culture — but because there was “no bread” to elevate them.

While BET claims they’re “looking for future ways to innovate,” fans aren’t sure if that means these iconic award shows will ever return. And with voices like Fat Joe and Jadakiss calling it a cultural loss, the conversation about preserving Black entertainment spaces is louder than ever.