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10:48 p.m. Saturday, October 10, 2009

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BET Awards features Ice Cube, Missy Elliott and lots of Gucci Mane

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The BET Hip Hop Awards show isn't really much about awards. It's basically a concert with a handful of awards incidentally thrown in. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

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Dorrough (from left), Nipsey Hussle, Snoop Dogg, Soulja Boy, and Jim Jones perform at the BET Hip-Hop Awards at the Atlanta Civic Center Saturday night.

Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com Dorrough (from left), Nipsey Hussle, Snoop Dogg, Soulja Boy, and Jim Jones perform at the BET Hip-Hop Awards at the Atlanta Civic Center Saturday night.

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Shot primarily at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Centeron Saturday night, the show won't even air until Oct. 27. The announcers actively encouraged the 3,000-plus attendees to post Tweets on Twitter while the show was being taped so there will be no surprises when the program airs.

Atlantans dominated the stage. Newcomer Gucci Mane performed three different times. His most shameless namedropping plug of himself: a song called "Gucci Bandanna," in which the word "Gucci" is referenced more than 100 times.

Soulja Boy, fresh from an arrest for running from the cops Thursday, rapped a couple of songs but said nothing about said arrest.

Tameka "Tiny" Cottle, who is in a long-term relationship with rap star T.I., came up to accept several awards on his behalf, including CD of the year. (T.I. is in prison for weapons charges.) She read a statement from T.I., who defiantly wrote, "To all the rappers, MCs and critics: I'm coming back with a vengeance!"

And with tunes such as Lil' Scrappy's "Addicted to Money" and Fabolous' "Throw It in the Bag," hip-hop is still happy to embrace consumerism in the face of a debt-ridden economy.

Atlanta's reunited Goodie Mob closed out the show with two of their hits, including "Get Rich To This," which features lyrics, "I get the funds, then I split with it." But that was written in 2000, when the economy was healthy.

The funniest snafu came from host Mike Epps. He introduced video for choreographer Fatima Robinson and accidentally said Missy Elliott - twice. On his third try, he just said, "let's see the video."

A not-so-funny snafu: Epps congratulated President Barack Obama for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He then noted incorrectly that Obama was the first African American to do so -- just down the street from a center dedicated to a particular Atlanta Nobel Peace Prize winner named Martin Luther King Jr.