In an August 2025 interview with Billboard, BET CEO Scott Mills confirmed what many had been speculating. The network has suspended the Source Awards and BET Hip-Hop Awards indefinitely.
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Fat Joe: BET Hip Hop Awards Suspension is ‘Form of Gentrification’
In the wake of the news, rap artist Fat Joe expressed his disdain with the network’s decision. He says the cancellation of those award shows is a “form of gentrification.”
“This is a form of gentrification, what’s going on,” he said during a recent episode of his and Jadakiss’s podcast, Joe and Jada.
“Little by little over the years, quietly, they’ve been firing a lot of people behind the scenes at BET and everybody who has something to say. And I know ’cause I’ve been working on the BET Hip-Hop Awards for three years. It was like the budget, not for me, but the budget just kept getting chopped and chopped and chopped.”
Joe also added that he believes that this is just a sign of more things to come. And believes that more cuts are coming. Eventually, that could mean their flagship award show, the BET Awards, could be the next big domino to drop.
“That’s seconds away. The writing’s on the wall,” the Bronx native said of the BET Awards. “If you see everything else falling down, it’s a domino. That’s the next one. One little fumble by Kevin Hart—one little joke too many, that’s over, too.”
Mills noted that although the shows were suspended, they do have plans to put them back into production. But the Network wants to “reimagine them for this changing media landscape,” before doing so.
“We have a team that’s actively thinking about where those award shows might best live as the media climate continues to evolve,’ he said. “They aren’t gone. And we also still have the NAACP Image Awards and the Stellar Awards.”
