BET Networks Senior VP Stephen Hill is explaining why Trina is not up for a 2011 BET Award.

Trina was, let's just say, less than pleased when she found out her named had been left off the list of nominess for Best Female Hip-Hop Artist. She summed up her feelings in a tweet  stating, "f*ck BET..."

Even Nicki Minaj, who was nominated, said she wasn't taking the award seriously until Trina was added to the category. It looks like both rappers will be sorely disappointed this year.

As Stephen explained in an interview with his network, it was just a case of bad timing. "Trina didn’t submit a video that was in during the eligibility period," he stated.

For Trina to have made the cut-off, she would have had to submit a video to the network between April 1, 2010 and March 30, 2011. As Stephen explains, her clips for "Million Dollar Girl" came out on March 12, 2010, making her eligible for the 2010 BET Awards, which she was nominated for.

And while Trina did pop in as a guest star in Lola Monroe's video, that wasn't enough to get the Diamond Princess a nod for 2011.

"While she was featured in Lola Monroe’s video, the rules are you have to release a video of your own," Stephen said. "You have to be the primary artist on it. You can’t be just the feature artist and be eligible. So that’s why Lola Monroe was eligible, but Trina was not for this year, because it came out this year."

See there? It wasn't an intentional diss on the Miami FeMC. Anyway, if BET was really hating on Trina, they wouldn't have had her perform "Million Dollar Girl" during Rip The Runway this year

"I want to be clear: We love Trina, we work with Trina," Stephen said. "We definitely understand that it’s a misunderstanding." 

Beyond that, Stephen's not even mad about her mini-Twitter tantrum. He revealed that he kind of understands it. "I’ll tell you now, if I were Trina and I’d released something during the eligibility period and it had not been nominated, I probably would’ve had a little bit of side-eye, too," Stephen said before going back to his initial argument. "The truth is she just wasn’t in the eligibility period."

Now, if BET could just explain why Keyshia didn't make the cut. Inquiring minds want to know!

— Sonya Eskridge

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