On this Labor Day, welcome back to DCBLOG as we roll along with our look Inside the MTV Trifecta on this, the 104th and final day of summer '17. On Saturday, we brought you the Pulse of The Challenge XXX, as well as the weekend proceeding it. And before we resume covering Episode 7 later to wrap up Summer Seventeen, we have a bonus edition of something that usually punctuates our weekly series of posts: DC ExtraTime.
Last weekend was an eventful one for several reasons:
in the much hyped Money Fight - and just after he got to mingle with a fellow Challenger at his 40th birthday, Floyd Mayweather took care of UFC star Conor McGregor to become the first undefeated professional boxer to reach 50-0. Up north in the Bay Area, protests took place in the streets outside the campus of UC Berkeley as the racial tensions that tore apart the country last year is once again taking precedent.
And for those lucky to subscribe to the King Kong of premium television, they watched the finale of the penultimate season of HBO's Game of Thrones. But most attention was paid to the city of Houston, America's fourth largest city, as the city endured a devastating and historic flood caused by the first hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland in several years - Hurricane Harvey, leaving the city under water and with lots of changed lives in Southeast Texas.
Meanwhile, the biggest entertainment event of the penultimate weekend of Summer '17 took place down in Los Angeles, and inside the house once ruled by the Showtime Lakers and Wayne Gretzky. And it's the focus of this dedicated installment of ExtraTime, where we'll be joining Team MTV as they experience the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards at The Forum.
As always, the VMA's provides the opportunity for a pioneer channel of the cable television revolution to celebrate its musical heritage and the music of the moment in the last big bash of the summer. And with a resurgence of a presence of the first letter in the channel's original name, the event also helped to kickstart the month-long countdown to the return to MTV airwaves of a show which defined weekday afternoons for a decade: Total Request Live, better known simply as TRL.
With music in mind, every year's VMA's have always provided star power, and it was no different this year as Katy Perry served as host of this year's event as she ably emceed the ceremony and had the night's last performance alongside Nicki Minaj. The night's biggest star bookended the affair in his L.A. digs as Kendrick Lamar opened the show with in a bevy of fire, and picked up six awards including Video of the Year. Mirroring the merge into a gender-neutral category that happened at the Movie & TV Awards a few months earlier, Ed Sheeran picked up Artist of the Year.
Fifth Harmony made waves with a performance that reflected their new life as a foursome after Camila Cabello's headline-making exit last year, along with picking up Best Pop Video. Also making headlines was Taylor Swift, who not only added an additional award to her trophy case but debuted the video for the lead single off of her new album Reflective, "Look What You Made Me Do", just after social media wondered what had happened to her. Also winning awards were Canadian star
Alessia Cara,
Khalid (Best New Artist),
Zayn Malik (Best Collaboration with T-Swift), and
Pink - honored with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award.
Obviously, from the time in between last year's show at Madison Square Garden in New York and this year's show on the west coast, the world has certainly changed and a country & its people have been divided. With music's special power of bringing people together, this year's VMA's offered plenty of opportunity to reflect the mood of America's youth in the new era of our current President, and this year's show took on a more serious mood than is usually the case.
But no moment was as powerful and stirred as many emotions as when the mother of slain Charlottesville protester
Heather Heyer,
Susan Bro, presented the award for Best Fight Against The System to all six of the nominees: Cara,
Big Sean,
John Legend, Black Eyed Peas'
Taboo, the
Hamilton cast, and lead performer of what was the night's most moving performance. There, rapper
Logic, Cara and Khalid performed their suicide prevention anthem, "
1-800-273-8255" and were joined on stage by those who survived attempts to take their lives and were given one more chance at life. Given the fact that the guy who I got to meet back in 2004 and took his life earlier this summer in Linkin Park's Chester Bennington, that performance really struck home to me.
As is the case - and as we wrote after the AYTO finale last spring, being part of the community known simply as Team MTV has its privileges, and one of them is of attending major events put on by the channel each year. Last year, we showcased the
Real World Go Big or Go Home cast and Challenge champ
Jordan as they attended what was the last MTV Movie Awards in its old format of celebrating just motion pictures (and before it expanded to include TV shows with this year's event), and where they got to meet the likes of Rebel Wilson, pop singer Halsey and the best in movies at the Warner Bros. lot.
This year, the two who met the songstress just before her ultra-successful collaboration with The Chainsmokers on "Closer,"
Kailah and
Ammo, were at it again at an MTV awards show, but this time as part of a broader family and the one who had by far the largest contingent of any single attending party, music or otherwise. And in the minds of this site and those of you who visit this site each week, they and those who were in that entourage were the ones of the greatest interest of everyone who walked the blue carpet inside The Fabulous Forum.
Kailah and Ammo were part of most of the cast of
The Challenge XXX - Dirty 30 who came to the VMA's to represent the MTV franchise with the longest continuous lineage of any regular series still airing. For many like
Bananas,
CT,
Veronica,
Darrell,
Cara Maria,
Derrick and
Leroy, this was old hat: they had attended VMA's and Movie before starting back when their original Real World or Road Rules season was airing, or in Cara's case during Rivals II, and obviously the feeling doesn't get old for them. But for others still getting used to having that membership card along with wearing that Under Armour uni, this was their very first time walking the red carpet at a major awards show. And for those like Cory and Ashley M, they had the opportunity to soak in the feeling for the first time of being TV stars and being in the big time in front of a worldwide audience, and the throngs who would pay a fortune to get a chance to meet them and see the big stars at this end-of-summer bash.
For a moment at least, the game situation was put aside for a few hours and the attention was paid to just enjoying the night with some of their closest friends, and adversaries too, as well as meeting celebrities from throughout the musical and pop culture spectrum. And through the magic and courtesy of SnapChat, Instagram, Twitter and the like, we'd like to share with you some of the Dirty 30's moments from VMA Night, along with a few other attendees who represented the Trifecta, and a little bit more detailed than the post put out by
MTV.com the night of the big show. Enjoy.
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| Cast on the blue carpet. (MTV.com) |
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| Leroy, Darrell, Derrick H., Nelson and Cory |
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| Challenge Champs and Brain Candy Podcast hosts Susie & Sarah (IG @SusieMeister) |
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| Nicole, Kailah, Briana, Nelson, Ashley, Cory, Derrick H., Derrick K., Darrell, and Jordan. (Instagram) |
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| Cara Maria inside the limo en route to the Forum. (Instagram) |
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| Bananas and Leroy. (Twitter @MTVBananas) |
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| Ammo in the limo. (Twitter @LoveIsTheAmmo) |
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| Briana with Hazel-E from VH1's Love and Hip Hop (Twitter @BLaCuesta) |
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| Briana and Nicole with Lil' Yachty (IG @BlaCuesta) |
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| Ashley M. on the red carpet. (Twitter @MTVAshleyBrooke) |
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| Derrick H. and Dario (Twitter) |
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| Cara, Ammo and Nicole. (SC NicoleMTV) |
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| Jordan, Bananas and Tori with Rory Kramer (host of Dare to Live) and Farrah from Teen Mom. (IG Story) |
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| Kailah, Leroy and Wild N Out's Justine Valentine (SnapChat) |
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| Sarah, Susie and Kailah (SnapChat) |
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| Nicole, Briana, Simone and Kailah. (IG @NicoleXORamos) |
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| Add caption |
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| Cory, Bananas, Nelson and Dario (SnapChat) |
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| Cara and Ammo. (IG @MissCaraMaria) |
Well, not everything was all roses and chocolates on this night. Rumors on the grapevine suggest that Kailah and Cara Maria got into it inside the Forum, just weeks before the filming of the reunion. Here's the video embedded below, taken from Cory's live Instagram hit.
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Farrah, Jenelle and
Sophia (IG) |
Along with AYTO and Challenge alum and
new mom Cheyenne, it's not just the Trifecta who had the pleasure of walking the blue carpet and then experiencing this eclectic evening under the SoCal stars. For the ladies who've had every move of their lives being documented for eight years, this is only the third VMA's that the two generations of
Teen Mom have attended: original girls
Catelynn and
Amber (and her new boyfriend in tow),
Leah and
Jenelle of its second generation, and the newbie of the bunch,
Briana from Teen Mom 3. And there's
Farrah, who went with her daughter Sophia and took pictures with just about everyone including Nelson.
This is the last red carpet that the cast of MTV's most successful foray into scripted programming, Teen Wolf, will walk on. But there was only one representative of the Wolf Pack at the big show in Tyler Posey, as the series heads towards its conclusion this fall. Also representing the MTV family among established series included its most-famous bromance: Catfish's Nev Schulman and Max Joseph, Chanel West Coast from Rob Dyrdek's Ridiculousness, and Conceited from Wild N Out along with Justine Valentine.
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Bananas with Chloe and Garrett
from Siesta Key. |
As for those whose MTV experience has just started or will very soon, there's the latest show to land the coveted post-
Teen Mom slot, the cast of the addictive
Siesta Key -
Alex,
Madisson,
Juliette,
Garrett,
Kelsey,
Chloe and
Brandon; the hosts of the all-new
TRL in
Amy Pham,
D.C. Young Fly,
Erik Zachary,
Lawrence Jackson and
Tamara Dhia; the always wild and unique host of
Dare to Live -
Rory Kramer, and co-host of
90s House,
Christina Milian. And the man who will take over as host of
Are You The One? in a few weeks,
Terrence J served as co-host of the pre-show.
This year's Video Music Awards sure brought in the goods with both the music and the big moments that those who have watched this event for a long time expect, but also reminded those who watched of the age we're living in. Quite a night in the Forum.
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Tonight, we'll have an abbreviated WRAP of Episode 7 of The Challenge XXX - Dirty 30, as we'll head inside the Strategy Room to discuss where we stand in this season about or more of a third way thru. Plus, we'll also bring you up to Las Vegas for The Money Fight, as we'll join two Challenge champions as they experience Mayweather vs. McGregor -- one as a fan, the other between the ropes. See you for that later this evening as we continue DCBLOG's look Inside the MTV Trifecta.
- I AM DC
Last weekend was an eventful one for several reasons: in the much hyped Money Fight - and just after he got to mingle with a fellow Challenger at his 40th birthday, Floyd Mayweather took care of UFC star Conor McGregor to become the first undefeated professional boxer to reach 50-0. Up north in the Bay Area, protests took place in the streets outside the campus of UC Berkeley as the racial tensions that tore apart the country last year is once again taking precedent.
With music in mind, every year's VMA's have always provided star power, and it was no different this year as Katy Perry served as host of this year's event as she ably emceed the ceremony and had the night's last performance alongside Nicki Minaj. The night's biggest star bookended the affair in his L.A. digs as Kendrick Lamar opened the show with in a bevy of fire, and picked up six awards including Video of the Year. Mirroring the merge into a gender-neutral category that happened at the Movie & TV Awards a few months earlier, Ed Sheeran picked up Artist of the Year.
This year, the two who met the songstress just before her ultra-successful collaboration with The Chainsmokers on "Closer," Kailah and Ammo, were at it again at an MTV awards show, but this time as part of a broader family and the one who had by far the largest contingent of any single attending party, music or otherwise. And in the minds of this site and those of you who visit this site each week, they and those who were in that entourage were the ones of the greatest interest of everyone who walked the blue carpet inside The Fabulous Forum.
