BET Hip Hop Weekend in Atlanta starts off fiery: pre-parties, after parties, and after after parties

From the pre-parties to the club takeovers, in-store promotionals, celebrity strippers, and everything in between

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Thursday, Sept. 27 — It’s dark and fiery inside the auditorium of the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center. And that’s no metaphor. Rick Ross is onstage rehearsing his big performance for Saturday’s scheduled recording of the 2012 BET Hip Hop Awards. He’s casually dressed in all black and wearing shades as he goes through the motions while the track to his hit “Hold Me Back” fills the dark theater.

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Behind him, a huge screen projects his MMG (Maybach Music Group) label logo as animated diamonds float like slow-motion raindrops. It’s a minimalist stage design. But who needs elaborate when you have pyrotechnics? Fire balls launch 20 feet into the air from fake oil barrels stacked onstage. The heat from the flames is felt 20 rows into the audience. If Rick Ross had a jheri curl, this could turn into a Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial gone bad.

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“These haters can’t hold me back!” Rick Ross woofs into the mic. He’s fluid by the third take, his voice filled with more emotion than it ever sounds on the radio. As soon as the song ends, a couple of sexy ladies saunter on stage. One holds Ross’s mic while the other drapes an Adidas tracksuit jacket over his shoulders. They play flirt and he cops a gaze as they exit stage right. It’s an act but no one needs direction to play the role.

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Now in it’s seventh year, the BET Hip Hop Awards is standard fare for Atlanta. From the pre-parties to the big show — which airs Sun., Oct. 9 — to the club takeovers, after-parties, in-store promotionals, and everything in between. The weekend started on Wednesday at the W Hotel Midtown where the 2nd annual ASCAP Atlanta Legends Mixer paid homage to T.I., along with industry vets Michael Mauldin (Jermaine Dupri’s dad), Perri “Pebbles” Reid, Kendall Minter, and Noontime. Young Jeezy celebrated his birthday Thursday with a private all-black-everything gala at the Biltmore Hotel, attended by the likes of Usher, Funkmaster Flex, actor Tony Rock, Chaka Zulu (DTP Records), and Lisa Wu (former Real Housewife of Atlanta).

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On Thursday evening around 7 p.m., T.I. arrived at Barnes & Noble Buckhead to sign copies of his newly released book, Trouble & Triumph. As the line snaked between bookcases, daughters, mothers, and grandmothers aimed cellphone cameras at the man of the hour. Some of T.I.’s white suburbanite fans — yes, he has those — were even in the house. A Boston native new to the Atlanta area admitted to being a dedicated viewer of T.I.’s reality show, “T.I.’s Family Hustle.”

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“I love his son, Major,” she said while leaning over a banister to snap a pic. With his successful makeover as hip-hop’s Bill Cosby complete, it’s hard to remember BET Awards weekend serves as the anniversary to the criminal firearms purchasing escapade that eventually earned T.I. nearly three years total of federal prison and probation time, which recently ended.

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While his presence alone will make him a star of the show when it’s taped on Saturday, all bets are on 2 Chainz to walk away with the most shine for Atlanta. Kanye and Rick Ross are also big-time nominees.

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The only thing bigger is the laundry list of underground record release shows, strip club jumpoffs, Atlanta Football Classic after parties and BET Hip Hop Award parties and after parties — hosted by some of rap’s biggest celebrities, from Waka Flocka, Diddy, and 2 Chainz to Chris Brown, T.I., and of course Rick Ross (pyrotechnics not included) — below the jump: