By the time the BET Awards went live from the Microsoft Theater at L.A. Live on Sunday night, more than 150,000 fans had already gotten a taste of the event through the network's four-day BET Experience.
Launched in 2012 to expand the audience for the network's highly rated awards show and offer other programming for R&B and hip-hop fans, the BET Experience is an ambitious celebration of black music.
Consider that on Saturday night, for the first time in two decades, most of the surviving members of the groundbreaking N.W.A reunited onstage to perform some of the records that helped define gangsta rap and put the West Coast on the hip-hop map.