Some awards shows are about music. The 2026 BET Awards, held Sunday at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, were about music and also about a man being publicly confronted for faking a terminal illness while not wearing underwear, which is not a sentence that previous BET Awards seasons required.
Lizzo attended in a sheer, sparkling chocolate brown gown that HuffPost described as “undaunted,” which is the word a publication reaches for when the subject’s comeback album sold 2,700 copies in its first week and she has shown up anyway in head-to-toe sparkle. The album is called “Bitch.” It sold 2,700 copies. For context, a moderately successful regional act at a local record store moves more units on a busy Saturday. Lizzo told YouTube’s “Swiftologist” the result felt “soul-crushing” and that her “connection, musically, with the world is different” than in 2022, which is the kind of understatement that 2,700 first-week copies earns. She appeared undaunted. The gown was doing the heavy lifting.
Ray J attended the ceremony and, at some point that HuffPost’s live coverage recorded without fully explaining how it got there, announced he was not wearing underwear. He said this into a microphone at culture’s biggest night, apparently deciding that the occasion called for it. The audience, per HuffPost, responded with a range of reactions that suggested not everyone agreed about the occasion’s requirements.
Comedian Druski, hosting the show, called out Ray J from the stage on a separate and more serious matter. Earlier this year, Ray J had implied he was facing a terminal health situation. Druski, standing in front of the full assembled audience of the BET Awards, said: “Why you alive? I thought you was gonna be dead. I was praying for you and everything.” Ray J was present, alive, in the audience, not wearing underwear. The crowd found the confrontation significantly funnier than the underwear situation, which tells you something about the crowd’s priorities and also about Ray J.
Lauryn Hill received the inaugural Living Legend Icon Award and performed, and received the kind of ovation that comes with being genuinely great and having not released a studio album since 1998, which is either a legend’s restraint or the most effective scarcity strategy in music. She did not disclose her underwear status.
When the same awards show contains a 2,700-copy comeback, an underwear disclosure, a fake-death confrontation, and a living legend who hasn’t released music since 1998, what exactly is the show celebrating, and is there a consistent definition?
Sources
HuffPost: Cardi B, Lauryn Hill, Teyana Taylor Win Big, D’Angelo Honored At The 2026 BET Awards
