From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

A white carpet, wall-to-wall stars

By Nekesa Mumbi Moody
The Associated Press

August 29 2005

MTV dodged two major disasters -- one from nature, the other from the barrel of a gun -- as the Video Music Awards kicked off Sunday with flashy performances and over-the-top entrances.

The annual bash was briefly overshadowed by Hurricane Katrina, which left South Florida with nine dead, others hospitalized and, three days after making landfall, a half-million people in Broward and Dade still without power.

But as the storm passed, a celebratory mood took over Miami -- until early Sunday morning, when rap mogul Suge Knight was targeted by gunfire at a Kanye West party.

But MTV vowed that neither event would affect the ceremonies -- and judging from the glitzy pre-show festivities, the party was in full swing.

Green Day arrived in the vintage green convertible first shown in their Boulevard of Broken Dreams video -- one of two clips that helped the rock group earn a leading eight nominations. Lil Jon came by sea, on what looked to be a three-story, pimp-my-yacht contraption.

The prison-bound Lil Kim arrived on the white carpet in a Rolls Royce Phantom, though she looked somewhat demure in her low-cut mauve dress -- no pasties or dangling appendages this year from the diminutive rapper.

"I might show some leg," teased the star, who is due to start serving a year-and-a-day sentence in September on a perjury charge. When MTV personality Sway delicately asked if she had anything to say to fans who "might not see you for a while," Lil Kim said: "You can write me letters."

The show was hosted by Diddy (the artist formerly known as Puffy, P. Diddy and Puff Daddy) with performances by Kanye West, Mariah Carey, Green Day, R. Kelly, Shakira, Kelly Clarkson and others, plus appearances by Gwen Stefani, Destiny's Child, Eva Longoria and Jessica Simpson, to name a few.

The much-hyped white carpet -- one of the Diddy-designed effects -- was rolled out in the blazing heat Sunday afternoon, as throngs of media and about 200 fans waited beneath sunny skies for celebrities to arrive by car, limo and boat.

The awards typically snowball into a weeklong party with decadent A-list bashes. But Hurricane Katrina led to the cancellation of some events. Several stars, like West, were late arriving to Miami because of the weather.

Knight, the Death Row Records founder who has been at the center of some of hip-hop's most violent moments, was shot in the leg early Sunday morning at a star-studded party thrown by West. His injuries were not life-threatening, and no arrests were made.