KANYE WEST, MAGIC JOHNSON, DEBRA LEE & OTHERS HONORED BY HIP HOP SUMMIT

The fourth annual Hip Hop Summit Action Network Awards were held Monday night, October 16th, at the Lighthouse at New York’s Chelsea Piers. This year’s honorees included Kanye West, Steve Stoute, BET’s Debra Lee, and Earvin “Magic” Johnson.

During his acceptance speech, West addressed some of the comments that landed him in the headlines last year. He said, “You know with the Bush comment — everybody gives me credit for that all the time. They [ask] ‘wasn’t that scary?’ — it wasn’t as scary as other comments because it was popular opinion. Now if you come on MTV and say, ‘well you know hip-hop is very homophobic,’ that’s more placing yourself in the line of fire because so many people — black people in general (and hip-hop is an extension of black people) they would use a person’s lifestyle and would paint that on someone to try to bring their career down. If a black person reaches the 10 million mark, they say ‘Oh he’s gay.'”

“What I was just saying a moment ago is that the time that it took to put together and the fact that it’s still going, is amazing to me. A lot of people can’t do that. You know they don’t follow up on something like this. Russell has a hundred projects going on. Why the Hip Hop Summit still? it shows you. It’s a testament to how much he loves it.”

The Hip Hop Summit Action Network was founded by Russell Simmons and outside of the awards, his brother Rev Run commented on hsi commitment to the organization. He said,