Shadow puppets, sheep and lots of twerking: Memorable moments from the VMAs
Beyoncé took home the night's top prize for best video, Rihanna honoured with lifetime award
Who run the world? By the sights and sounds of Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards, that would be Beyoncé and Rihanna. The two pop stars were heavily feted during the three-hour ceremony — with Beyoncé taking home the night's top prize for video of the year and performing a 16-minute medley of songs from her visual album, Lemonade.
Meanwhile, Rihanna was honoured with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, the prestigious lifetime achievement award that has been given to U2, Kanye West and Justin Timberlake, among others.
She performed four separate times over the course of the show, running through a healthy dose of songs from throughout her career before being presented the award by her rumoured romance Drake.
Here are a few of the other memorable moments from this year's VMAs, held at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Dirty dancing
If the show had a recurring theme, perhaps it was the barrage of risqué dance moves flaunted on the VMA stage. There was no shortage of twerking and grinding during Rihanna and Britney Spears' performances. Spears was backed by rapper G-Eazy and a screen full of hand shadow puppets.
But the most provocative moment came at the end of Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj's duet. The two ended by pushing two male backup dancers downward, suggesting a sexual act.
Origins of the Phelps face?
In what first seemed like an odd pairing, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps came out to introduce rapper Future's performance — the two were also seat mates at the ceremony.
But Phelps soon revealed how big a hip hop fan he is and that Future was the inspiration behind the meme-laden Phelps face he sported at the Rio Olympics. Phelps told the audience that he was listening to Future's song Stick Talk while making the face.
The Kanye West rant
It's become a bit of a VMA tradition: Kanye West will get on stage at some point during the show and rant. In the past, he's mused about running for president and interrupted Taylor Swift.
This year, producers reportedly gave him four minutes to do whatever he pleased. He filled it by boasting about the Taylor Swift controversy surrounding his song Famous, calling out to his ex-girlfriend Amber Rose seated in the crowd and listing off his role models — "Truman, Ford, Hughes, Disney, Jobs, West."
He also premiered a video for his song Fade, set in the style of a steamy 80s workout video, which strangely closed with a flock of sheep.
Drake and Rihanna's awkward kiss
Anticipation built over the evening. Drake had been rumoured to show up, but didn't come out earlier in the show to collect his best hip hop video award for Hotline Bling. He showed up at the tail end of the ceremony, decked out in a tux, to present the lifetime achievement award to Rihanna. He told the audience he had been in love with the singer since he "was 22 years old."
When Drake finished his speech, he appeared to go in for a kiss on the lips. But he ended up awkwardly sliding down to kiss Rihanna's neck. There's lots of speculation online about how Rihanna might have curved and dodged the smooch — but it looks like the pair ended up kissing afterwards anyhow.
