Source: AP

Next to the fashion, performances are what people really tune into music award shows to see and during this year’s Billboard Music Awards, viewers saw a lot.

From Karate head chopping to missed notes and on-stage lap dances, this year’s award show had some of everything. Let’s run down the most, um, interesting.

Chris Brown

If this tweet from Breezy doesn’t give you an indication of how his performance went last night, let us break it down to you: we would’ve taken autotune over that beat up “Fine China” falsetto any day.

Lil hoarse for the performance but it happens. Good Isht otherwise.

— Chris Brown(@chrisbrown) May 20, 2013

The good thing is Breezy can still dance, but we’re just a wee bit nervous about the future of his singing career. Might be a good time to make that ultimate switch to rap.

Source: WENN

There was some stiff…ahh who are we kidding? There was some odd competition in the Top Rap Artist category at the Billboard Music Awards tonight. Nicki Minaj, Drake, Flo Rida, Pitbull, and Psy (?) went head to head for the honor during the 2013 ceremony, but when all was said and done the choice was pretty obvious….

Nicki Minaj took the gold!

We’re still trying to figure out how Gagnam Style Psy was even a nominee, but until we have an answer, let’s just focus on the present. Was Nicki your choice for top rap artist?

Image: John Leyba, The Denver Post

-Michael Phelps is now the all-time most-medaled Olympian in the history of the Olympics. With a gold medal performance during the men’s 200-meter freestyle relay race, Phelps earned his 19th medal, surpassing a Societ gymnast, Larisa Latynina, who’d held the record for more than four decades. The Fab Five, America’s women’s gymnastics team, also earned gold, the first time since 1996. And, in some controversy, four sets of badminton doubles teams, two from South Korea, and one each from China and Indonesia were disqualified for purposely throwing matches in order to get more favorable matches in the following rounds. For shame!

-Hilarious. Pitbull fell victim to Internet trolls who took advantage of a Facebook marketing campaign, hosted by Walmart, that promised to send the (bad) musician to whatever Walmart store got the most “likes.” With some manipulation and the hashtag #ExilePitbull, that store was the Kodiak, AK location. But , Pitbull took it in stride, got the keys to the city and some bear repellent, and then went on his merry way.

-In much more serious news, President Obama is edging out Mitt Romney in three key states, according to the most recent Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News polls. Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania favor Obama, in part because there’s still some suspicion over Mitt Romney’s business background and refusal to disclose more of his tax returns. Women prefer President Obama in all three states.

-People like small businesses better than big corporations.

-Snoop Dogg is now Snoop Lion. The rapper went to Jamaica, became a Rastafarian, changed his name and filmed a documentary called Reincarnated. Now he’s moving into reggae music. We’ve got a trailer from the film below, which will be at the Toronto Film Festival. Looks pretty good to us.

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There’s been buzz around Culo for a little bit now, but the 248-page coffee table book about women’s backsides just became available for purchase last week.

The collaboration between Sean “Diddy” Combs, Interscope Geffen A&M Chairman Jimmy Iovine, and fashion photographer Raphael Mazzucco is supposed to be a celebration of the booty as the “epicenter of female sexuality, desire, and empowerment,” but marketing behind the book makes it look like an upscale version of Maxim—particularly the preview video featuring suspect lyrics from rapper Pitbull.

Executed differently, Culo might have stood a chance underneath the overarching cloud of female objectification, but I have a feeling this effort is going to get passed over as poorly packaged sexist machismo no matter how tasteful the images are–particularly in light of the lengths people will go to get the booty. I also couldn’t help but notice a lack of brown derrieres in the promo, although that could be a good thing in this instance.

Check out the clip and tell us your thoughts. Is Culo something you’d have on your coffee table?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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By Brittany Hutson

By now, you’re probably familiar with seven 15- second commercials which feature either Trey Songz, Pitbull, Drake or Rihanna out and about living the glamorous life of a young, hip celebrity in the studio, at a fashion show, on the tour bus or in their posh apartments. While we’re used to seeing these artists and their jet-setting lifestyles on a continual basis, we’re not used to seeing them featured to promote a century old brand. These artists are part of Kodak’s new M5 90 EASYSHARE digital camera campaign. The whole point of these commercials is to highlight the exclusive Share Button feature of these new cameras.

From a marketing standpoint, Kodak is typically known as the camera that young mothers use to capture warm and fuzzy moments of their children and share them online to other family members. But now the company is taking a whole new direction with these stylish and edgy ads to target younger and trendier consumers, which happen to be the most active demographic when it comes to sharing images digitally through social networking.

Tiffany Bradshaw, a marketing brand strategist based in Los Angeles, gives Kodak a thumbs up for recognizing the importance of attracting a demographic that is different from what Kodak traditionally goes after. “I think it’s smart that Kodak wants to tap into this market. It appears to be an attempt to make these consumers brand loyal,” she said.

There is no doubt that the company badly needed this image revival. In 2005, Kodak was the third-biggest seller of digital cameras globally, according to market-research firm IDC. By 2009, Kodak had fallen to the number five spot, the lowest it’s been since IDC began tracking Kodak’s sales in 2001. Though Kodak sold 11.2 million digital cameras in 2009, it was a 19 percent decline from the prior year, according to IDC.

Research compiled by the Wisconsin School of Business also recognized Kodak’s slight drop in popularity among consumers. In their Kodak Fall 2009 Integrated Company Analysis, it stated that Kodak “seeks to connect with the consumer at an emotional level and encourage them to smile and make others smile—all while capturing and sharing their newfound happy moments with Kodak products. However, the company fails to deliver a clear and differentiating promise that resonates with a meaningful number of consumers.”

But more than that, the researchers acknowledged how vital social media would be to Kodak’s marketing efforts. The analysis noted that the number of Kodak followers was lower compared to that of their competitors, Canon and Nikon. “Kodak cannot afford to lose in the digital space as social media has the powerful effect of creating communities of ever-growing fans who evangelize the brand…”

By 2010, Kodak created a product to be more competitive in the social networking arena. The EASYSHARE, described as the world’s thinnest 5X optical zoom digital camera, allows consumers to simultaneously share their pictures to multiple social networking communities such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and the Kodak Gallery. With the product in hand, the next order of business was to put together a marketing campaign that would embody the excitement around it.