As I watched last night's BET Awards and the time clicked away and I realized that, contrary to the rumors, Beyonce would not be making a guest appearance during Usher's set to sing the "Love In This Club" remix, I began to wonder if my kind thoughts about the ceremony had more to do with it's frequent Beyonce performances than anything else. Usher's opener was shaky — did anyone else catch that flip he did? And most of the performances, although good (and bad; see Keyshia Cole), left me wanting (a Beyonce performance. I have a problem). But things started to pick up considerably when Alicia Keys performed and brought out SWV, TLC, and En Vogue. The whole performance, but especially AKeys, SWV and En Vogue, reminded me of the days when popular musicians could actually sing live and sound good doing it. In other news: Kanye West appeared very humble, Lil Wayne appeared very sober, and Diddy changed his familiar slogan from "Vote or Die" to a more direct "Obama or Die." It was a night of surprises. Also, it was oddly heartwarming to see Rihanna smiling encouragingly as her man feigned sexual relations on stage with Ciara.

The show came together when the Al Green tribute rolled around, with Maxwell (when's the comeback?) singing a fabulous cover of "Simply Beautiful" and Al Green almost literally bringing down the house when he sang "Let's Stay Together." It's rare to see an audience full of famous people of all different ages and different musical genres join together with such unabashed happiness and enthusiasm. Who do black people love more, Barack Obama or Al Green? It's a serious question.

After the jump, tons more pictures. And click here for the winners.

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If you were watching the BET Awards (more on them later) last night, you might have a different impression of Usher's opening performance than I do. My impression is that his dance moves were looking pretty rusty, especially when he tried to be extra with acrobatics at the beginning. Maybe he's getting a little too old for all that? After all, "You Make Me Wanna" and "Nice & Slow" (see above) were more than ten years ago. Painful but true.

There are many things one can say about "our" network, BET, but a positive thing I can say is that I generally find the BET Awards far more entertaining than any award show MTV ever puts out. The show airs tonight, with performances by Lil Wayne, Usher, Alicia Keys, Al Green, Chris Brown, and others, but last night everyone's favorite network president Debra Lee hosted a pre-show dinner in LA. A glowing post-engagement Jill Scott was in attendance, along with Ashanti, Nelly, Soulja Boy, Eva Pigford, and Robert Townsend. Eclectic pre-party crowd.

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With five nods, T-Pain leads in the list of 2008 BET Award nominees, which were announced on 106 & Park. When T-Pain leads in nominations, that clearly says something about the state of music and the state of BET.

"T-Pain is everywhere," BET Executive Vice President Stephen Hill told The Associated Press. "He's got five nominations, none of them for his own work. He's had a great year; he's introduced a new element." That new element being not actually needing to sing in order to become wildly successful.

Kanye West was nominated for three awards. If BET knows what's good for them, they'll give him at least one of them.

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50 Cent's awkward performance at the BET Awards Tuesday, when he roamed the stage and audience silently (as Tony Yayo nervously spouted hype-manisms), was not due to the fact that he was expecting to lip sync and was instead given the instrumental track, as some Web sites have speculated. Oh, no. It was a nasty case of the wibbly wobblies that did him in!

"Everything doesn't quite happen the way you practice it," he continued. "You see, I was hit by the aerialist and I was wibbly-wobbling coming down. Twenty five feet in the air, man, you fall — can't nobody help me with that, you know what I mean? Then by the time you get down, you try and regroup to fight, you got the pyro going off, the music starts, we four bars into the song, you know — I just wasn't concentrating."

I don't know. I watched the clip and didn't see any aerialist knock into him, but who knows? My question is, since when are performers allowed to lose their concentration for a prolonged period of time during a nationally televised performance? I was always under the impression that was part of performing. Can you imagine Beyonce or 50's new girl toy, Ciara, pulling stunts like that? If think not.

[MTV]

Ok, so Beyonce's performance at the BET awards last night was kind of similar. But I prefer the term "paying homage" to "stealing," don't you?

[C&D]

As I (and everyone else) predicted, Beyonce was a big winner at last night's BET Awards, and seemed to loosen up considerably without Jay-Z at her side. Note to anyone that didn't watch: Beyonce would like you to know she's black, proud, and very smiley.

My favorite moment had to have been the Destiny's Child reunion on stage, where Michelle Williams played her position in the background with sub par dance moves, and Kelly Rowland had the unfortunate honor of performing after Beyonce's tour-trained voice and fell embarrassingly short. She looked beautiful in that Wonder Woman get-up, though.

Other moments: TGT standing in unison in the audience to honor Gerald Levert (of LSG), Chudney Ross (what will all the other socialites think) laughing in embarrassment as Diana Ross semi-scolded hip hoppers for their bad language, T.I. apologizing for acting "unroyally" at Kevin Lile's charity brunch, Robin Thicke's ill-advised dance breakdown, 50 Cent's on-stage meltdown, and, although I do not necessarily support her proud-to-be-obese movement, Mo'nique sure compiled some limber big girls to do her back-up dancing.

I also learned that Mo'nique calls Al Sharpton Pop-Pop, if I ran into Jennifer Holliday singing Dreamgirls tunes in a back alley I would run screaming in the other direction, and proud black man Chuck D can actually still stomach sharing a stage with Flavor Flav. All-in-all quite edifying. More pics and the winners after the jump.

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It would have been asking too much to be spared a live performance from Rihanna (although I am interested to see what she's wearing on the red carpet), but I don't object to any of the other presenters and performers in the final lineup for next week's BET Awards. Oh, except for Al Sharpton, who has spent the better part of the last couple of months waging a half-assed war against some of the artists being honored by BET that night. Wouldn't the best form of protest be to stay away? Anyway, here's the lineup.

Newly-added big name celebs scheduled to appear or perform include: mega-star Beyonce’, hip-hop mogul Diddy, R&B divas Keyshia Cole, Kelly Rowland, and Alicia Keys, chart-topping ingénue Rihanna, legendary singers Gladys Knight and Chaka Khan, sultry crooners Robin Thicke and Mario, soul maven Erykah Badu, rap stars Nelly and Fabolous, actress Vivica A. Fox, funnyman Charlie Murphy, activist/political leader Al Sharpton, hip hop activist/rapper Chuck D, American Idol Jordin Sparks, writer/director/actor Tyler Perry, movie stars Nick Cannon, Michael Clark Duncan and Henry Simmons, and NFL superstar Reggie Bush.

They join previously announced show talent T.I., 50 Cent, Ne-Yo, Ciara, Terrence Howard, Queen Latifah, Yolanda Adams, Tyra Banks, Katt Williams, Big Boi of Outkast and Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

With the list above, the majority of which are performers, I don't know when there is going to be time to hand out the awards. Actually, that's what makes the BET awards so much better than all the others. Still, since it is an award show, I've listed my admittedly Beyonce-heavy picks (in bold) after the jump. They're a combination of who I want to win and who I think is going to win. I'm interested to know yours.

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