Beyonce and Rihanna earned more than awards during Sunday night’s MTV Music Video Awards. She prowled the stage with a 15-minute medley from her powerful “Lemonade” album in a song and dance routine that brought a long standing ovation. The singer arrived on the red carpet accompanied by the mothers of three African-American men who died in the U.S.in the past two years. Needless to say, she looked stunning.
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Next up, Ariana Grande shot to the stage for her sweaty, treadmill-induced performance of Side to Side, later joined by Nicki Minaj.
In the nine years since, Britney has headlined a successful residency at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas, released hits like “Till the World Ends”, “Work Bitch”, and – earlier this month – “Make Me”, and seemingly turned her life around after an early aughts so troubled they literally led to legalized conservatorship.
Drake, left, presents the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award to Rihanna at the MTV Video Music Awards at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Aug. 28, 2016, in NY.
Drake said “she’s someone I’ve been in love with since I was 22 years old”.
Elsewhere, David Bowie was given a posthumous award for Best Art Direction (Blackstar), Twenty One Pilots’ Heathens won Best Rock Video and Coldplay’s Up & Up received Best Visual Effects.
Girl group Fifth Harmony, which won a pair of VMAs, rounds out Twitter’s top five tweeted topics of the show.
Kanye West, who often hijacked the live VMA show, presented a new video for his single “Fade”.
Rather bravely, organisers made a decision to give Kanye a whole four minutes to ramble on about whatever he wanted as he introduced his latest video. Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below. From Michael Jackson singing a medley of his greatest hits in 1995 to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera kissing Madonna during a much chronicled 2003 performance and Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift’s 2009 acceptance speech, it seems like the show has become more about the drama and less about the music throughout the years-until last night.
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Kanye proved to be right when Beyonce’s Formation beat him, as well as Justin Bieber, Adele and Drake, to the big one, Video Of The Year.
