Kanye West Pays Tribute to Diddy in Surprise Appearance at the 2022 BET Awards

You never know where Kanye West will turn up. Well, I guess him appearing at a Balenciaga show isn’t too surprising but who expected Yeezy to show face at the 2022 BET Awards?

And yet, there he was on June 26, showing up to pay homage to former mentor Diddy, the recipient of this year’s BET Lifetime Achievement Award.

Wearing what appears to be a YEEZY GAP Engineered by Balenciaga hat, Hood by Air jacket, his favorite Balenciaga boots, moto gloves, and a full-coverage facemask — I thought we left those behind in Kanye’s previous phase! — Ye rattled off a five-minute tribute to Diddy that felt pretty improvised.

The speech also felt very, uh, moist. Kanye’s facemask might look cool (eh, maybe not) but it also restricts breathing, as you can hear from the many inhalations that pepper the pauses in Ye’s speech.

Unlike Tay Zonday, clearly Kanye does not move away from the mic to breathe.

During the speech, Ye recalled a recent visit to the dentist office, his early idolization of Diddy, and thanked Diddy for “inspiring so many of my life choices… my WIFE choices!”

It’s an odd reference to Kim Kardashian, presuming it is one at all, especially considering that Diddy was married to a couple models but certainly no one as public as Kim.

Mercifully for his business partners, Ye withheld any further shots at adidas or his wife, who’s currently on a skincare media tour with the couple’s kids in tow.

The speech itself was mostly drama-free, in fact. Funnily enough, it was almost more about Kanye than about Diddy, who was really more of a framing device for Ye’s recollections of his own career.