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Jack Harlow strayed away from the expected outfit celebrities wear on the red carpet. The 24-year-old rapper showed up to the BET Awards wearing merch from friend and “Industry Baby” collaborator Lil Nas X.
Harlow’s all black outfit featured a Lil Nas graphic tee, black Givenchy pants with a chain, and derby shoes. While the shirt Harlow had on was not on the Lil Nas X website with the rest of his merch, two shirts could be found on etsy.com. One was a very similar image, but had a few extra details added. The other shows a picture of Harlow on the red carpet and claims to be the same shirt.
The shirt was worn by Harlow in protest of Lil Nas X’s snub from the 2022 BET Awards. On June 1 the nominees were announced for the award show and Lil Nas X had not received a single nomination for any category.
The artist had three songs reach No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100: “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” “Industry Baby” (with Jack Harlow), and “Thats What I Want.” Industry Baby became the 2nd longest running #1 song on the Billboard rap charts of all time.
During his performance later that night Harlow was no longer wearing the shirt and instead adorned a tank top. Speculation persists as to if he never planned to perform in the shirt or if maybe BET made him take it off.
After some tweets and a snippet of the now-released song “Late to da party ft. NBA Youngboy”, BET responded with a press release.
“We love Lil Nas X. He was nominated for a Best New Artist BET Award in 2020, and we proudly showcased his extraordinary talent and creativity on the show twice: he performed “Old Town Road” with Billy Ray Cyrus at “BET Awards” 2019 and his “BET Awards” 2021 performance was a highlight of our show. No one cheered louder that night than BET. Unfortunately, this year, he was not nominated by BET’s Voting Academy, which is comprised of an esteemed group of nearly 500 entertainment professionals in the fields of music, television, film, digital marketing, sports journalism, public relations, influencers, and creative arts. No one from BET serves as a member of the Voting Academy.” BET would also go on to post a video on their Instagram highlighting moments of Lil Nas X at past BET Awards with the caption ‘This is bigger than the #BETAwards. This is real life and we will always rock with Lil Nas X and stand for our people.
In a series of emails between BET and The Black Wall Street Times in which we asked for the names of the people on the voting academy in the interest of transparency, BET refused to release the individuals names.
Link to Black Wall Street Times>