Did BET Get The Nominations Right For Best Female Hip Hop Artist?

Who would you select as the five nominees for the 2011 BET Awards Best Female Hip Hop Artist?  Leave a comment with your nominees to enter to win a designer purse!   

Two weeks ago on 106&Park, BET announced the nominees for the 2011 BET Awards.  As soon as the announcement was made there was uproar of disapproval on the nominees for the Best Female Hip Hop Artist category, among others.  In case you missed the announcement, here are the nominees for Best Female Hip Hop Artist: Diamond, Cymphonique, Lola Monroe, and Nicki Minaj.  Please note the category should have five nominees however it only has four this year.  (You can view the nominees for all categories here.)  People were upset for various reasons but probably the two most prevalent were: 1.) No one really knew who Cymphonique was and therefore didn’t understand why she was nominated and 2.) Many felt as if Trina should have been nominated, including herself who took to twitter to express her disappointment.  By the way, Diamond and Nicki Minaj expressed their disappointment in the nominations via twitter as well.

Stephen Hill, President of Music Programming and Specials at BET, spoke out two days after the drama to offer clarification on the nominations.  (The entire interview can be read here.) Basically, in order to  be considered for a nomination, an artist must have submitted a video to be aired on BET during the eligibility timeframe.  Really?! Is that all it takes? This makes absolutely no sense to me.  Last time I checked, the BET Awards nor the category are a video award.  Why should determination of who is the Best Female Hip Hop Artist in 2010 be determined by who submitted a video to be aired on BET? In what world does that make sense?  Maybe I’m tripping.  Maybe this is the process for all awards.  Not so much.  For the Grammy’s, Recording Academy associate and voting members as well as major and independent record labels can submit nominations for artists that released recordings for general commercial distribution in the United States during the eligibility timeframe. From there the submissions are categorized and sent out to members to vote on who the five nominees should be.  That makes sense.  American Music Award nominees are selected from Big Champagne’s Ultimate Chart which ranks the most popular artists and songs based on a weighted combination of music sales, radio and TV broadcast, Internet streaming and video viewing and “additional online metrics,” including social-media activity.  That makes sense.  It seems to me that BET should consider changing its criteria in compiling its nominees.  Here’s a suggestion in regards to the Best Female Hip Hop Category: nominees should be selected on the impact they made within hip hop as a female during the eligibility period.  To determine impact the following factors should be considered: the release of new music, the release of new videos, radio airplay of music, television airplay of videos, music sales, and visibility within the hip hop music scene.  Now that would make sense.

In using my criteria as a guideline let’s evaluate the current nominee list. Below are the 2010 highlights for each of the nominees (keep in mind this is not a comprehensive list and I am not staying within the eligibility timeframe for simplicity’s sake):

• Diamond
  • Released Bitch Muzik Part 3 and Cocaine Waitress mixtapes
  • Participated in the cypher for the 2010 BET Hip Hop Awards
  • Released “Hit Dat Hoe” and “ Lotta Money” videos
  • Featured on the following: Dorrough Music’s “Get Big Remix”, Dondria’s “Shawty Was Up”, and Ludacris’ “My Chick Bad Remix”
  • Signed a deal with Jive/Battery Records
• Cymphonique
  • Released Fabulous Girls album
• Lola Monroe
  • Featured on the Travis Porter’s “Make It Rain” remix
  • Released “Overtime” video
  • Released Untouchables mixtape with Boosie
• Nicki Minaj
  • Grammy nominated for Best Performance by Rap Group or Duo for “My Chick Bad” with Ludacris, Nominated for Hottest Breakthrough MC of 2010 by MTV
  • Won Best New Artist and Best Female Hip Hop Artist at the 2010 BET Awards
  • Released “Right Thru Me”, “Check It Out”, “Your Love”, and “Massive Attack” videos
  • Featured on Keyshia Cole’s “I Aint’ Thru”, Diddy Dirty Money’s “Hello Good Morning”,  Christina Aguilera’s “Woohoo”, Usher’s “Little Freak”, and Mariah Carey’s “Up Out My Face”
  • “Your Love” was No.1 on the Billboard Chart
  • Covered VIBE and Billboard magazines
  • Released Pink Friday album

 Based upon the above data I would say BET got it somewhat right with its nominations.  Diamond, Lola Monroe, and Nicki Minaj should be nominated but Cymphonique should not (sorry kiddo). 

Based upon my nominating criteria who would I nominate?  My nominees would be: Diamond, Eternia, Lola Monroe, Nicki Minaj, and Trina. We’ve already reviewed the 2010 accomplishments of Diamond, Lola Monroe, and Nicki Minaj.  You can search the site for any of these ladies and the proof will be in the pudding by the way, but here are the 2010 highlights for Eternia and Trina:

• Eternia
  • Released “Queens Chronicles”, “Goodbye”, and “At Last” videos
  • Released “At Last” album
• Trina
  • Featured on Lola Monroe’s “Overtime”, Dawn Richard’s “Bottles”, Ludacris’ “My Chick Bad Remix”
  • Released “White Girl” and “That’s My Attitude” videos
  • Released Amazin album which debuted on Soundscan at #1 on the Independent Chart and #2 on the Rap Chart

From this fiasco I think there are two lessons learned: 1.) We shouldn’t put a lot of weight into who is nominated and who receives a BET Award because their criteria is weak to say the least; 2.) Every female hip hop artist should submit every video they ever release to be aired on BET so that they may be considered for a BET award.

This is just my two cents.  Feel free to give me yours. 

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