Things got interesting at the 2024 BET Awards when Donald Glover took the stage to present the Album of the Year.
“This isn’t personal, but I feel like I should have more BET Awards,” Glover said before handing over the award. “I’m serious. I mean, it’s the Black Entertainment Television Awards. How much more entertaining do I have to do?”
The room was taken aback at Glover’s approach moments after a GloRilla performance he called amazing. The Peacock Theatre’s auditorium was filled with uncomfortable silence and laughter as the multi-hyphenate addressed the elephant in the room through a stand-up-like delivery. After years of starring in the NBC sitcom “Community,” Glover went on to create and star in FX’s “Atlanta,” one of his generation’s most culturally relevant shows and the launching pad of the acting careers of Lakeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz, and Brian Tyree Henry. In music, he released two of the biggest songs in the 2010s, with 2016’s “Redbone” and 2018’s “This Is America.” The latter song is where he got his only BET Award in 2019.
To compare, Glover has five Grammys, five Writers Guild of America Awards, four NAACP Image Awards, two Golden Globes, two Emmys and two Peabody Awards.
“I have more Grammys than Will Smith, which makes no sense, but the same amount of BET Awards as Sam Smith,” Glover said. “Does that make sense to you guys? Me and Sam Smith are neck-and-neck at the Black Entertainment Television Awards.”
Justin Bieber also has one BET Award.
“If I have to do, I don’t know, Baby Boy or something, just let me know,” Glover said.
Baby Boy, the 2001 film that stars Tyrese Gibson and Henson, both in attendance, is one of two movies BET viewers claim plays on the network too often. Notorious, the 2009 movie based on The Notorious B.I.G.’s life, is the other.
“I could have Jonathan Majors put me in a headlock, shave my head, I could do it,” Glover said, referencing the movie’s famous scene of Gibson being placed in a headlock.
Glover has referenced BET throughout his career. On 2011’s Camp album, he rapped about BET on the song “Hold You Down,” a reflective record about his Blackness and his struggle to find acceptance within the community. Instead of simply changing the network’s programming, he said he wanted to see a change in how Black people view themselves in entertainment. He said he didn’t want to stop until people started saying that James Franco was the White Donald Glover, which was the exact opposite comparison then. He also appeared on BET’s “106 & Park” three times in the early 2010s, presented a BET Award in 2015, and gave an impromptu performance of “This Is America” at the 2018 awards.
BET hasn’t had too large a glaring issue acknowledging Black excellence across all variations, but the awards show has holes in Hollywood. One way to fix this issue would be to introduce more categories and require more sponsorship. So creatives like Glover, Issa Rae, and Lena Waithe could have more than one BET Award, and Bailey and Tyler, The Creator could win their first.
