You can BET on big hair and a hot show

Vince Bucci/PictureGroup

Trey Songz and Kelly Rowland perform onstage at the 2011 BET awards at the Shrine Auditorium on June 26, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Vince Bucci/PictureGroup

It’s that time of year again. A time when it’s lucrative to be a hairstylist, a stripper or a Kleenex vendor in the City of Angels. Yep, the Black Entertainment Television Awards are almost upon us. They will take place at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on July 1 and will only be televised in SA on Top TV’s BET (Channel 190) on July 3. As is the norm every year, R&B singers, babymommas and reality TV hopefuls will try to outdo each other with the most costly and show-stopping hairdos.

Rappers will be spending those racks on racks on racks on adult entertainment – think “fitties, fitties, hundeds, hundeds”. For the uninitiated, that is “fifties, fifties, hundreds, hundreds” and refers to Tyga’s Rack City ode to the strip club and its employees. This is likely to be the behaviour of the award winners while the losers will have to ensure they have lots of Kleenex on deck.

The BET Awards are a big deal in that community, so it’s no wonder that BET’s president of music programming and specials, Stephen Hill, has pulled out all the stops this year. First, Chris Brown will perform – remember when he was blacklisted by BET for beating Rih black and blue? – and so will Young Money Barbie, Nicki Minaj. Kanye West’s G.O.O.D Music empire which includes Big Sean (who is nominated for quite a few BET Awards this year), Teyana Taylor, Pusha T, 2 Chainz, CyHi Da Prince and D’Banj will also hit the stage as a collective. West is nominated a whopping seven times.

So it’s safe to say there won’t be any steamy performances like the one Kelly Rowland and Trey Songz pulled off last year. No wonder the former Destiny’s Child beauty has been seen doing magazine spreads with him and playing his love interest in music videos. Of course, they won’t say they are dating.

What’s super interesting is that instead of just having the nominees announced on 106 & Park as usual, starting from today, there will be a half-hour show on BET every day that hunts down the nominees and hand-delivers the news in an envelope to the potential winners. The awards are actually hosted by Samuel L Jackson, but it’s unclear whether he will be surprising the nominees. The likes of Big Sean, Keke Palmer, Diggy and more will be surprised by the BET team. This is a cool way to add some more meat to the channel’s already meaty event, but this might mean we see less of License To Grill. Boo-hoo.

• The BET Awards nomination show is on BET (Top TV Channel 190) at 8.30pm every weekday.