The BET Hip Hop Awards cut the cord as DEI dies The show has been suspended as cultural history more broadly faces erasure at the institutional level. But I'm not even sure how Paramount plans to spell BET — let alone program for it — without DEI. I still remember attending the first BET Hip Hop Awards back in 2006. But he also laments how digital accessibility has reduced our music to "the ambient background of the continued exploitation and commodification of Black culture." At a time like this, when the record of America's sordid history is actively being deleted by folk in power, losing the BET Hip Hop Awards feels trite in comparison.