Black Entertainment Television
Born as a 80’s baby you’ll remember the explosion of hip-hop in the 90’s. Remember the day when you were exposed to B.I.G(R.I.P), Nas, Big Pun (R.I.P), Jay-Z, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, The Firm, CNN, Big L (R.I.P), 2 PAC (R.I.P) and many other rappers, don’t forget the Snoop Dogg. These rap artists and groups brought the street depression and their struggles into your ears. You were able to paint a picture of hood struggles providing you with food for thought. Hip-hop (the art form) was able to bring awareness of situations that Corporate America ignored. Also, Hip-hop brought unity into the Black Culture, saying “Hey, I can relate to that” “I’m not the only one”. As this music began to form into a popular genre the growth of BET rose into our lives as a daily channel for our black society.
Before BET sold out, we were able to watch BET as a family programming station for black culture. Even though the production was not the best, we looked beyond it because we had our own station. We were able to have a station that played our music, listen to our views, embraced our culture with positive enlightment. Corporate America saw this rise to action from our culture and they said ” Hey, we can capitalize from this market.” And so they did. BET was sold to Corporate America, destroying our music, controlling our society by dumming down our culture through meaningless music videos over and over again.
I’ll stop right here…Please watch this 4 part video below to understand the destruction of BET.
Click on the URL for the 4 Part Series :
Confessions of a BET Producer Part II
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