“Trina didn’t submit a video that was in during the eligibility period. Let me back up. To be eligible, here’s what you have to have: a video that’s submitted and then first played on BET…between April 1 of one year and March 30 of the next year. So for this eligibility period it would be April 1 of 2010 to March 30 of 2011. She did not release a video to us in that time. “Million Dollar Girl” came in March. I think it was March 12 or so of 2010. And so she was in last year’s nominees for that.”

“And I want to be clear: We love Trina, we work with Trina. She performed “Million Dollar Girl” on Rip the Runway in February of 2010. So we love Trina. We definitely understand that it’s a misunderstanding,” he said. “And I’ll tell you now, if I were Trina and I’d released something during the eligibility period and it had not been nominated, I probably would’ve had a little bit of side-eye too. But the truth is she just wasn’t in the eligibility period.”