Sunday night’s BET Awards turned out to be largely uneventful, aside from three things: the Xscape reunion set, the New Edition tribute and the uncomfortable red-carpet confrontation between rappers the Migos and Joe Budden.
As always, the positive outcome of this strange and unnecessary situation are all the memes and gifs. But first, what happened? See the edited footage above, in which the Migos are seated for a red carpet interview with the hosts of Complex’s show Everyday Struggle. As soon as co-host DJ Akademiks asks the Migos about their hit song “Bad & Boujee,” the interview begins to dissolve. Akademiks asks Takeoff to repeat himself multiple times. Fellow co-host Joe Budden can’t quite take it and requests to “wrap this up.” (I assure you this backstory is important to getting to the entertaining part.)
For reasons that remained elusive to me when I first watched this clip, Joe Budden gets out of his seat, drops his mic and leaves in a huff. This reportedly prompted a “shoving match” between the two parties off camera. What exactly was Joe Budden reacting to and why? Existentially, it’s unclear. The easiest answer is that he’s consistently aggravated. Over at The Root, Michael Harriot broke down the incident succinctly and theorized: “It’s not that Budden is salty; it’s that he can see the degradation of the quality in hip-hop over the years, and feels that groups like Migos and rappers like Lil Yachty contribute to the dumbing-down of the art form he loves.”
On his podcast today, in an attempt to explain things, Budden questioned the Migos’ apparent bad attitude and yelled, “I’ve never seen a good Migos interview in my entire life, ever!” Again on his web show, Budden clarified that the source of his frustration was that the Migos had been giving a really bad, “dry interview”—which is customary when interviewing celebrities and so any sane, capable interviewer would simply adapt. However, Joe Budden doesn’t deal well with “divas” or people who appear to be too happy.
Anyway, I must now question my sanity for choosing to explain all this. The entire conflict is ridiculous, except for the reactions, which innately acknowledge how ridiculous it is. For example, I’m still laughing about this remix of Akademiks’s awkward exchange.
You will also be amused by this isolation video of everyone’s reactions after Joe Budden left—which are a mixture of: “What the hell?” “Did he really...?” “I’m confused” and “I’m entertained.”
Taking a closer look:
At the least, we have a new reaction gif for when drama is unfolding.