Axl Rose photo by Scott Gries
The 2016 MTV Video Music Awards may be over… but the long and rich history of the famous and sometimes infamous awards show will always be remembered. The VMA will always have moments which are not necessarily all about the performances but which will be looked back to because they either entertained you or left you so dumb founded, you ask yourself: “What did I just watch ?! ”
I would rather not dwell on the sometimes pointless and cringe inducing moments that go on during this type of award shows that have nothing to do with music in the first place, but the outstanding performances from the artists themselves are what I always believe should come into focus.
Nonetheless, the VMA are always a must see television for anyone. It is not hard to understand why the VMA are very much part of popular culture since its creation in 1984 because they are definitely effective in capturing a moment in time when it pertains to the “inner workings” of the music industry.
The producers might not always get it right when it comes to the artists who win in each category. However, the producers behind the VMA who are often the unsung heroes of the said awards have a clear understanding of the artists that have dominated in their respective genres that particular year. Plus, they just present the awards show as they see fit for the times, and surprises are always in store.
This latest article will be about the MTV Video Music Awards but I am focusing on an integral and sometimes overlooked aspect of any awards show and that is the “surprise performances of unannounced artists”. They are the artists who are not advertised for the show and kept secret until the last minute when they hit the stage. These surprise artists keep viewers at home tuned in to the end and are often more talked about after than the awardees themselves.
Listed below are My top 3 picks of surprise performances from the long and rich history of the MTV Video Music Awards:
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1) Guns N’ Roses from the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards I still have this performance recorded on my VHS when they first televised this here in the Philippines on MTV ASIA more than a decade ago. This was a long time coming for Guns N’ Roses as host Jimmy Fallon had stated before introducing the legendary band who the producers of the VMA had been asking for years to perform again in their awards show.
This incarnation of Guns N’ Roses with only Axl Rose as the original member performed a medley of their hits which consisted of “Welcome To The Jungle”, “Madagascar” and “Paradise City”. While “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Paradise City” are classics taken from their first studiorelease ‘Appetite
For Destruction’, “Madagascar” was from their then unreleased album ‘Chinese Democracy’ that would take another couple of years after 2002 before it would finally be released.
Just to hear that classic guitar intro and then the unmistakable and incomparable opening note coming from Axl Rose in “Welcome To The Jungle” was enough to make the hair stand on end for any longtime Guns N’Roses fan. It was also a vindication for Axl Rose to finally be able to perform again in the VMA as it was reported from multiple sources that the other former original members attempted to block this from taking place. Well, luckily for all of us fans of Axl Rose, the performance still happened which helped build the folklore and legacy around Guns N’ Roses.
2) RunD.M.C, Kid Rock, and Aerosmith from the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards
While this was not an entirely surprise performance as a whole, the participation of Aerosmith during the latter part of this already allstar performance, was.
Some of you might be asking: Who is Kid Rock ? Well, in the late 90’s, Kid Rock was one of the biggest artists and his megahit “Bawitdaba” solidified him essentially as a certified “Rock Star” and he got to perform the first portion of his best known hit with the likes of pioneer hiphop artists Run Dmc in a medley of their respective hits.
The surprise happened beyond the halfway mark of their performance when Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith literally kicked the door wide open from the opposite end of the venue to walk through the crowd and join Kid Rock and Run Dmc onstage while performing “Walk This Way”.
To have Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith perform their classic “Walk This Way” alongside Kid Rock, the new kid on the block at the time Kid Rock, and with one of the pioneers of hiphop, Run-
D.M.C, was the most memorable performance that night. To this day, it is still one of the most lauded of all-star performances ever in VMA history.
3) Ja Rule, Ashanti, and Nas from the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards Two surprise performances from the same year 2002 is not a coincidence. It was a very fruitful year for the rock and hiphop genre to make a strong statement in the music industry.
With Ja Rule, these were the years when almost every major mainstream artist regardless of the genre at the time wanted to feature him in their track or do a collaboration with him. Indeed, in the early 2000’s Ja Rule had ruled the airwaves and was everyone’s favourite guest artist in their singles. To have a better understanding of this, think of what PitBull was a couple of years ago. That was Ja Rule in the early 2000’s ! Ja Rule had a good and solid run before he quietly faded into obscurity years later.
On the other hand, Ashanti who was everyone’s favourite soft spoken female hip-hop/R&B artist was often alongside Ja Rule in his early albums but Nas joining in the foray was not seen at that point. Nas, who was already a veteran hiphop artist and depending on how you view his rise to fame in hiphop, could be deemed to be debatable at best because of his short lived feud which he started with the late, great Tupac Shakur in the 90’s. Many people believe Nas did that in order to gain attention for his own professional career because prior to him repeatedly dissing the legendary rapper 2pac, no one really knew of Nas, as yet.
However, despite all the controversy surrounding Nas, I do still remember the short yet intense performance Nas did in the closing moments of Ja Rule and Ashanti’s number as Nas provided that rawness that was amiss in that year of the VMA with his preview performance of his single “One Mic”. Nas gave the audience and viewers at home a sample of his lyrical proficiency spewing words rarely heard even in an awards show like the VMA.
Now, many years later you would not probably remember that performance on “paper” but if you get to watch again it in its entirety, then you could see why I included in my latest installment of “My top 3……….. “.