BET apologizes for 'malfunction' during Usher's award speech, releases full uninterrupted version

Some of Usher’s confessions didn’t make it to broadcast during the BET Awards Sunday — and now, the network is apologizing and sharing his complete remarks.

The “Yeah” singer gave a lengthy speech as he accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award  during the ceremony, but the broadcast experienced interruptions that BET says were caused by technical malfunctions.

"Celebrating global icon Usher on our stage with a star-studded tribute and having him accept his award with a heartfelt speech was an honor,” a BET spokesperson said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. “Due to an audio malfunction during the live telecast, portions of his speech were inadvertently muted. We extend our sincere apologies to Usher as we couldn't be more grateful for his participation in Culture's Biggest Night. Fans can catch his full uninterrupted speech across BET platforms and tonight's encore on BET."

Reps for Usher did not immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly’s request for comment.

The network shared Usher’s complete 13-minute speech on YouTube. The singer said that he didn’t prepare remarks in advance because he wanted his speech to capture the authenticity of his feelings in the moment. “Is it too early for me to receive it because I'm still running and gunning and I still love this s--- like I did when I was 8 years old?” Usher pondered. (Some of the expletives within the speech remain muted in the YouTube version of the speech, while others are not.)

Usher went on to address his absent father, whom he says he forgives. “When I first started, I had a different idea about what I thought life was going to be,” he said. “I really was searching for some identity, and I was doing that specifically because… I was trying to make sense of this name that a man gave me that didn't stick around because he didn't love me, or at least that was my perception of it,” the singer said of his father, whose name was also Usher Raymond. 

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“I had to live long enough in order to understand that you have to have a forgiving heart in order to understand the true pitfalls and hardships of a Black man in America,” he continued. “And my father, he was a product of that. He made a lot of decisions, he made a lot of choices and the one that probably hurt and helped me at the same time was to stay away, but that's part of the reason why I say this is the year of the father, where all the fathers got to stay stand up for their sons and daughters and be the man that they need to be for them.”

Usher later thanked other inspirational figures whom he viewed as paternal presences in his life, including Harry Belafonte and Quincy Jones, as well as his grandmother Nancy Lackey and her husband James. “They were at the foundation of who I am as a young, hopeful child who just wanted to do something and wanted to matter,” he said. “Even though there wasn't a dad to call, even though there was not anybody to pick up and say ‘Hey, you going to be all right, this is what you do, this is what's okay, this is what isn't. You going to like girls, you going to go through s---, you got to figure it out.’ But it led me to be the father that I am to my boys.”

Elsewhere in the speech, Usher recalled his first audition for music executive LA Reid, in which he said, “You meeting your next superstar and I'm going to take that space on the wall right there, you gonna put my picture up there.’” The singer reflected on the idea that his confidence was egotistical at the time. “That wasn't ego speaking. I rebranded that word that day — I expressed goals out loud,” he said. “The reality is: you have to express your goals outwardly, no matter what people may see, no matter what they may feel, no matter how dark it may look, no matter how complicated it may be, because that's the only way that it will ever become a reality.” 

“You got to be willing to forgive. We got to be willing to be open,” Usher concluded. “That's what's real and that's what makes us human. That's what makes us men and women. I thank y'all, man.”

Watch Usher’s full speech at the BET Awards above.