2017 Billboard Music Awards

Ludacris and Vanessa Hudgens hosted the 2017 Billboard Music Awards live from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas last night. The show really could have been named the “Drake Music Awards” as the rapper won 13 awards. He took home the hardware for Top Artist, Top Male Artist, Top Billboard 200 Artist, Top Hot 100 Artist, Top Rap Artist, and Top Rap Album, JUST TO NAME A FEW!

The awards were secondary to the amount of performances that were packed into the time slot. Nicki Minaj opened the show with features from Jason Derulo, David Guetta and Lil Wayne. The evening’s big winner, Drake also performed but he took his performance outside to the Bellagio fountains (ala Britney Spears circa 2001). Miley Cyrus continued her more subdued era by performing her new song “Malibu”, “for the first time in years with pants on” as her loving sister Noah pointed out.

Other big winners of the night were The Chainsmokers. They performed “Young” for the first time on TV. Behind the scenes the duo showed love for K-Pop group, BTS with each Twitter accounts posting pictures of the groups hanging out. The Chainsmokers handle cryptically tweeting “See you guys this summer”. Could there be a collaboration in the works? Or is the pair just planning on seeing the group on tour?

In one of the more moving moments of the night, Sean “Diddy” Combs made a surprise appearance to honor the late, Notorious B.I.G. on what would have been the rapper’s 45th birthday. He brought on stage with him, CJ Wallace, Biggie’s son who said “My sister and I carry on his name with tremendous pride, I live my life by his words”. Afterwards, Diddy debuted the trailer for the new documentary Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop which is about the history of Bad Boy Records.

Legends were on hand at this year’s event as both Celine Dion and Cher performed. Dion celebrated the 20th anniversary of Titanic, performing “My Heart Will Go On” and Cher was presented with the Icon Award after singing “Believe” and “If I Could Turn Back Time”. The latter had Cher breaking out an epic, curly haired wig, black leather jacket and fishnets, reminiscent of the 1989 video. During her acceptance speech Cher made a point of saying she just turned 71 and she “can do a 5 minute plank, okay? Just saying”.

All in all, the show was a hefty three hours with performances taking up much of the time and under 10 awards presented during the show. For the full list of winners, Click Here. 

Written by Kristen

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