When Ginuwine set his thoughts to arriving on a stretcher for a efficiency of his hit music “Pony,” BET’s “106 & Park” was the one place to do it.
In 2003, one of many present’s two hosts on the time, Free Marie Wright, then recognized to viewers merely as Free, was winding her method by means of a regular introduction for the artist when her co-host, AJ Calloway, held a hand as much as an earpiece and pulled a face of concern.
“Hey, maintain on a second,” he broke in, forehead furrowed. “I simply heard one thing occurred to Ginuwine whereas he was doing his sound examine. He was presupposed to carry out proper now. We’ve to apologize. Guys, what … what occurred, canine?”
Moments later, Ginuwine was wheeled out to the stage on a gurney, sporting a purple visor turned to the aspect with matching dishevelled pants. Because the confused viewers regarded on, a backup dancer gave the singer one theatrical chest compression, sending him right into a full physique roll. A second later, he popped up, and sprang right into a snazzy efficiency. It was James Brown-caliber stage theater for the early aughts.
“We didn’t know what was occurring,” Ms. Wright, who hosted the present from 2000 to 2005, recalled final week. “After him, everyone needed to do all form of loopy stuff.”
The second is one small a part of the legacy of “106 & Park,” BET’s signature video countdown present, which is celebrating its twenty fifth anniversary this yr. Over 14 years, the present, which was typically in comparison with MTV’s “TRL,” grew to become a platform for Black artists and allowed for loose-buckle performances which can be exhausting to unstick from reminiscence. It additionally offered an area for fandoms to bloom and be expressed earlier than social media offered seemingly unfettered entry to stars, on their phrases. To rejoice the influence of “106 & Park,” BET is planning to incorporate a tribute to the present in the course of the BET Awards on Monday.
“We had been the barometer of the tradition on the time,” Mr. Calloway mentioned in an interview. “We had been all of the developments, the style. We had been it. You couldn’t go on the web and see all this you see now.”
The New York Instances spoke to half a dozen previous hosts of the present, which went off the air in 2014, in an effort to distill its 3,700-episode historical past all the way down to the moments that outlined the present — and, in some methods, the tradition.
2001
