Kevin Hart didn’t forget Kirk Franklin showed off his twerking skills during a performance last year.
On Monday night, as the host of the BET Awards, Hart was tasked with roasting the winners of the Ultimate Icon Award, which included Franklin. Hart recalled one of Franklin’s Reunion Tour shows, where he playfully twerked on Clark Sisters member Jacky Clark Chisholm.
“Kirk, do me a favor. When you get your award tonight, don’t come up here front twerking, okay? Yeah, don’t come up here popping,” Hart said. “Don’t do it, Kirk. Don’t do it. That’s what Kirk be doing—he be trying to blame it on the lord. The lord didn’t ask for that. Put it away, Kirk. Put it away.”
The comedian’s good-natured barb made the audience laugh, including Franklin himself.
“Hey, Kirk, on a serious note, I love you, man. God bless you—everything you doing is good,” Kevin added. “God is good all the time. Kirk, that makes it right. Whatever I just said, it goes away.”
After Franklin performed at the awards ceremony, he mischievously ganged up on Hart.
"Who's taller?" Franklin asked Hart, who responded, "I'm taller than you, Kirk."
"Who's taller?" Franklin asked again, prompting Hart to say, "Kirk, you got a heel on. ... We can talk about it later, but you clearly have a heel on. I got a flat. I'm taller. And you did exactly what I said don't do—you was up here bopping."
In January, Franklin apologized for twerking. Both that performance—and another one where he showed off his biceps while wearing a tank top during a show in Jamaica—shocked some of his fans.
"I am aware now that my choice of attire, which as a team we thought was going to be fine being outside in the weather, was going to be something that would not come across as disrespectful," Franklin said in a video apology, regarding his outfit in Jamaica.
"I’ve spent most of my career dancing and moving around and jumping on stage that I didn’t know that I would ever do anything that would ever offend anyone in any community, but it did," he added. "And because it did, I sincerely apologize."
Franklin explained that he "shouldn’t have been playing out there in front of y’all," and "should have kept that to myself and had fun with them the way I do when we be acting a fool. But sometimes I get on my own nerves. And when I was doing it, it seemed fine. When I saw the clip, yeah, it’s too much.t
Mariah Carey, Jamie Foxx, and Snoop Dogg were also honored with Ultimate Icon Awards at the BET Awards.
