Sep 8 - Little Brother's "Too Intelligent" Says BET, Network Responds To Allegation

With Little Brother's The Minstrel Show hitting stores next week, SOHH.com has heard BET is refusing to air the album's first video, "Lovin' It" because it is "too intelligent for the BET audience."

The video begins with a delivery truck dropping boxes labeled "gangsta," "backpackers," "earthy" and "icy" onto a street. The rest of the clip mostly sees LB and Joe Scudda, who is also featured on the song, performing in front of a capacity crowd. The clip also pokes fun at the Hip-Hop subgenres by depicting overly exaggerated backpackers and gangtas characters in the audience. "Lovin' It" also jokingly features typical scenes with Big Pooh sitting next to champagne-sipping models in the venue's VIP section while LB's entourage pop bottles. The video concludes with a car running through the boxes dropped on the street earlier.
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The statement of the video being "too intelligent for the BET audiece" was discussed recently on Columbia University's college radio station, 89.9 hosted by Timmhotep Aku. Aku says this statement was made verbatim by the program director from BET to one of the Atlantic records label reps.

SOHH.com contacted several officials at BET, including their vice president Stephen Hill, their program director, and publicist, Michael Llewellen who offered this response.

"It's not true, not in that context. BET reserves the right to show or not to show music videos of any type based on the network's own standards and decision-making processes," Llewellyn told SOHH.com.

When questioned further as to whether the words "too intelligent for the BET audience" was used, Llewellen did not respond. Atlantic Records has refused to comment.

The LB incident doesn't mark the first time BET has allegedly banned underground artists from its video rotation. In December 2004, SOHH.com reported that BET snubbed De La Soul's "Shopping Bags" video and The Beatnuts' "Find Us (In the Back of the Club)" clip featuring Akon.

In a meeting with BET heads, De La reportedly said BET told them they "weren't relevant to the BET audience" while The Beatnuts were told that "BET doesn't break new artists." The Beatnuts had previously garnered heavy rotation for videos like "Off The Books" from 1997's Stone Crazy, "Watch Out Now" from 1999's A Musical Ma#sacre and "No Escapin This" off 2001's Take It or Squeeze It.

The network has also been under fire from the black community for cutting its news coverage to make room for more videos in the past few years. Recently, the community has been frustrated with BET for its failure to cover the Hurricane Katrina's crisis.

Little Brother's The Minstrel Show featuring "Lovin' It" hits stores September 13th.


http://www.sohh.com/thewire/read.php?contentID=7519

BET is just showing there ignorance in this situation, hands down they def are not looking out for the best interest of hip hop bc if they were they would show the mainstream what real hip hop sounds like

reserve the right to not show... aka too intelligent for BET.. [!]s

this is straight bullish, little brother deserves 50% of the networks air time.

what they talkin about, saying "we reserve the right not to show certain videos" and they have they own standards, i didnt see anything offensive or vulgar in the video, BET is full of ish, but they show all that other bull on the video shows

thats a real coo video too....fucc BET then

yeah that video is to smart for me i prob couldent figure it out im retarted

dumbest ish i ever heard a station do or say...

who actually looks at the damn video that hard? if you dont get it..o well. jus listen 2 tha !!n song

just blur it out like all the other videos...

man little brother is real hip-hop, people need to pick that album up and put down the g-unit, bws and dipsets.

bet sucks now I remember when rap city was hot and mad hip hop cats and west coast and east coast they didn't discriminate. they probably mad cuz LB said rap city looking more like video soul in one of their songs. I watch mtv more than bet now and the fuse channel as well. bet sucks!

Showing little brother would be a contribution to the real hip-hop head community unfortuantely Bet who's is supposedly hip-hop oriented must not know what real hip hop sounds like. Little Brother keep doing your thing!

man that sucks, and how can they say the beatnuts are new artists. They played No Escapin This' from their Take It or Squeeze It Album a lot around 2000-2001. they are full of it.

Who cares honestly. Do you want every 13 year old in the US to be a fan of Little Brother? It's not like smart people watch BET.

haaaaaaa

is this a Nationwide release?

LOL THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN, EVER!!!!!

TOO MANY LITTLE KIDS BUYING G-UNIT

lol@The Beatnuts being new artists. They been around since I was like 14. the !! is working up there?

for real...i might be the last mufucca alive that does NOT have cable. i don't even want the hook-up. Black Entertainment Television does not represent us in the most positive fashion, or up to its capabilities. So this black chick won't be watchin it. Nor do I watch MTV and VH1.