Opinion

MARTIN: Why Megan Thee Stallion was not ‘Artist of the Year’

This past Tuesday, October 27, BET celebrated the biggest moments in hip-hop music with the 2020 BET Hip Hop Awards. 

The awards were a bit different this year because of the pandemic, causing the awards to go on without a large audience in attendance. Nevertheless, the great artists still did their thing and gave great performances. 

Many great artists won awards such as Drake, Future, Lil Baby, Megan Thee Stallion, Pop Smoke, Roddy Ricch, and Young Thug. With awards and only one person or group being able to win a category, you are going to have some people that disagree with something. 

I fall in that category with someone that disagrees with a couple selections. 

For example, I believe Cole Bennett should have won the award for Best Video Director of the Year. I also felt that DaBaby’s “Bop” video and Roddy Ricch’s “The Box” video had strong cases for the Hip Hop Video of the Year. Though, I was mad with the Teyana Taylor selection because she made great videos and Future and Drake did their thing with “Life is Good” video. The most egregious selection to me was Megan Thee Stallion going home with the Best Hip Hop Artist.

I have plenty of reasons why Megan Thee Stallion should not have won that award. Some on social media went outraged because Lil Baby did not win the award. To me, you can name at least two artists I believe deserved the award over her.

First with Lil Baby, the Atlanta artist had a great year. He earned 13 platinum and 16 gold RIAA certified singles. His album “My Turn” that was released in late February went 2x platinum. His album was also nominated for album of the year. This album was ranked number one in U.S. Billboard Top 200 at its peak. 

Second, DaBaby had a great year, and that was evident with his 12 different nominations for awards. His two albums “Kirk” and “Blame It On Baby” both went platinum. They both were nominated for album of the year and both peaked number one on the US Billboard Top 200. Even some fans considered Roddy Ricch more worthy, with his hit album “Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial” winning Best Album of the year. 

But in what terms does this compare to Megan’s work this past year. Megan year included receiving her first number one Billboard Hot 100 song with “Savage (Remix)” featuring Beyonce. She got her second one with Cardi B on the song “WAP” which earned 93 million streams the first week. It was also the first time a female collab debuted at the top spot on the Hot 100.

Where I think she lacked was in the album department. Yea, she had two great platinum songs, but they were not by herself. These other artists that I named off had at least one platinum song by themselves. Megan’s EP “Suga” also only peaked at seven on the US Billboard Top 200. Still, it is nothing to snooze at because it was good, but not great like the Roddy and the two babies. 

No, I do not dislike Megan or her music. I am really a fanboy and I love her music. I just believe there were more worthy artists for this award. Does that take away from Megan, not at all. In my opinion, she is the hottest female hip-hop artist in the game right now, but for artist of the year, I disagree heavily.

– De’Vante Martin is a sophomore mass communication major from St. Joseph, La.