Fat Joe is calling out Paramount Global for scrapping the Hip-Hop Awards while still throwing cash at other shows, and he’s not sugarcoating a thing.
During a convo on his “Joe And Jada” show, the Bronx legend sounded off about the network pulling the plug on the BET Hip-Hop Awards and Soul Train Awards, blaming it on corporate greed and what he flat-out called “gentrification.”
“This is a form of gentrification. BET came up as a community station for black people, right? In urban culture. And our man, Bob Johnson, took the check. He sold it. First black billionaire. He sold it, he sold it to Viacom and Paramount, MTV and them, VH1 and them,” Fat Joe explained.
To give that some context, BET got sold to Viacom back in 2001 for about $3 billion. Bob Johnson made history as the first Black billionaire, but that deal shifted BET from a Black-owned platform to a corporate product under Viacom, which later merged with CBS to form Paramount Global.
Now fast-forward to 2025 and BET CEO Scott Mills confirmed the network’s Soul Train and Hip-Hop Awards are on pause, supposedly to “reimagine” the shows for new platforms as cable TV keeps losing steam.
Fat Joe wasn’t buying that. He’s been hosting the BET Hip-Hop Awards for three years running and says he’s seen the budget cuts firsthand.
“Little by little over the years, quietly, they’ve been firing a lot of people behind the scenes in BET and everybody who has something to say, they’ve been firing them. And I know because I’ve been working on the BET Hip-Hop Awards for three years. The budget, not for me, but the budget just kept getting chopped and chopped and chopped,” Fat Joe said.
He pointed out how the VMAs are still getting real money thrown at them, and used Katy Perry’s aerial performance as proof.
“Last year, I debuted my single with Khaled at the VMAs and Katy Perry’s still flying through the air in the VMAs,” Fat Joe said.
Joe says it’s not about him getting paid—it’s about the show not having enough money to actually be creative.
“They [the VMAs] still got the budgets, they got the s###, you know. And so, I think, in the entertainment world, they kept underfunding them and you ain’t got no money to be creative. That’s why you was watching the Ratchet Awards. They ain’t had no bread,” Fat Joe said.
Meanwhile, the real reason behind the cost-cutting was most likely to trim the fat since Paramount just merged with Skydance on Thursday (August 7) in a massive $8.4 billion deal, forming a new company called “Paramount, A Skydance Corporation.”
As part of the shake-up, Paramount was in talks to sell off BET to a group led by Scott Mills for around $1.6 to $1.7 billion. No word yet if BET was sold as part of the merger.