Mary Mary will be honored this month with the Golden Note Award at ASCAP’s invitation-only 24th Annual Rhythm & Soul Music Awards on Friday, June 24th at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.  The award honors artists who have reached extraordinary milestones in their careers.

Past recipients of the Golden Note Award include Alicia Keys, Quincy Jones, Jay-Z, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and more.

Also honored that night will be Sean “Diddy” Combs, who will receive the ASCAP Founders Award.

Congrats, ladies!

Word has it that Marvin Sapp took home a BET Award last night– he won in the category for Best Gospel Artist.  I think we all called this one and could’ve seen it comin’ a mile away.  But I’m THRILLED for him!

Also nominated in the category were Vickie Winans, Kirk Franklin presents Artists United (for Haiti Relief song), Tamela Mann and The Anointed Pace Sisters.

By the way, did anyone catch the show???

An obvious highlight for the gospel industry was Kirk Franklin’s performance of “Are You Listening?” with Fred Hammond, Marvin Sapp, Kim Burrell, Yolanda Adams and Karen Clark Sheard.  Everyone was in great voice and looked great and all that.  I could’ve used a BIT more Karen Clark Sheard on the ad libs– but couldn’t we all?

But before all that happened, we had another dope-for-gospel type of moment. I was thrilled to hear Alicia Keys, in the middle of her medley of hits, introduce Kim Burrell, who joined Keys in singing “If I Ain’t Got You” (Burrell changed the lyrics to say ”if it ain’t you, Jesus… if I ain’t got you, Jesus…”).  It was an incredible moment– the audience went BANANAS as if they, too, were die-hard Kim fans since the days of her indie release of Try Me Again (y’know, with the short haircut on it).  I’m glad for where God’s taking her.

(An aside: El DeBarge wasn’t doing gospel, but that medley ministered to my VERY SOUL, so… yeah.  Just needed to say that cuz I grew up on DeBarge.)

OKAY, tell me what you thought of the show, if you caught it, and blah blah blah…

Go!