Sean “Diddy” Combs opened this year’s Billboard Music Awards on Sunday night (May 15) with a rousing performance and opening monologue.
Shortly after he kicked off the show with a medley of his new single, “Gotta Move on” and Notorious BIG’s 1997 classic “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems” — accompanied by Bryson Tiller, Jack Harlow and Teyana Taylor — DJ Khaled presented the host saying “they didn’t want him to host the Billboard Music Awards — but God did.”
Diddy, dressed in an all-black outfit with a diamond chain hanging off his neck, appeared on the BBMA stage, announcing himself as the “vibe curator” of the night. In a seemingly unrehearsed fashion, he continued:
“This is a full-circle moment for me, I won my first Billboard Award 25 years ago — and now I’m executive producing and hosting the awards because I hate award shows, award shows are boring. You know why they’re boring? Because of the people at the awards shows but we’re not having that tonight.”
As the crowd cheered, albeit with some confusion, Diddy continued his monologue by encouraging his guests to “tap into their inner child…before we had all the glitz and glam.” He also redacted his title of him as “host” of the evening, saying he was “not even a human being” — instead he insisted he had evolved past the “human” form and was now a “frequency.”
He also called himself “the black thunder” and “the chocolate boy wonder,” and of course — “the frequency elevator,” amongst several other flashy monikers.
Diddy also shared that he’s back in the studio and ended his speech proclaiming that he was going to do whatever he wanted — despite any protests of the studios because he was the “freest n—a,” (muted by the show’s television producers) saying he was dropping the n-word and other profanities in the process all “in the spirit of being free.”
At the very least, he inspired the City Girls, who followed him onstage — and were mutated by the show’s producers twice.