If you saw the BET awards this weekend, you’ll have noticed that they were a tribute to Michael Jackson.

Or, more accurately, a tribute to how brilliant Jamie Foxx wrongly thinks he is. But anyway, if the BET awards were a tribute to Michael Jackson, then surely one performer who’d be itching to perform would be Chris Brown. After all, people call Chris Brown the new Michael Jackson. Or the new Ike Turner. Or the new Sara The Saxophone-Playing Walrus. Whatever.

But anyway, Chris Brown didn’t show up at the BET awards. Did Jay-Z ban him? Chris Brown says no.

Now that he’s pleaded guilty to beating Rihanna’s face inside out – or one count of felony assault, which is more or less the same thing – it’s time for Chris Brown to start rebuilding his career. It looked set to be an uphill struggle for him, too, since – aside from a violently incomprehensible set of internet fangirls who still don’t believe that he attacked Rihanna despite him admitting to it in court – nobody really wanted that much to do with him any more.

But, just as Chris Brown was starting to run out of options, he was gifted an extraordinary piece of luck from the heavens – Michael Jackson died right before this year’s BET awards. It literally couldn’t have worked out better – Chris Brown could show up at the awards, look remorseful about the Rihanna thing, express grief about the Michael Jackson thing and bust out some of the crazy dance moves that caused people to call Chris Brown the new Michael Jackson before they realised that at best he was the new Bobby Brown and everyone would love him again.

But when the BET awards actually arrived, Chris Brown was nowhere to be seen. What happened?

Well, one scenario is that Chris Brown’s new pre-award ritual involves beating up a woman in his car until he gets arrested which is, after all, exactly what happened at the Grammys. But that theory should probably be discounted on the basis that we just made it up.

So here’s the other scenario – that Chris Brown was scheduled to appear at the BET awards but Jay-Z threw a strop and banned him. The San Francisco Chronicle thinks that might be closer to the truth:

A source tells the New York Daily News, “Jay is a big name in the BET community, and he was very vocal about his displeasure with Chris attending the ceremony. He didn’t want Chris anywhere near the awards so close to the court’s ruling.” But a spokesman for Brown has denied he was ever booked to play at the glitzy show.

So what’s the truth here? Is Jay-Z really trampling on Chris Brown’s comeback attempts? If it’s true, then Jay-Z should be ashamed of himself. Not that we’re particularly keen for Chris Brown to be famous again any time soon, but at least an appearance by him would have cut Jamie Foxx’s allotted time onstage down by a couple of minutes. Because, really, is there a bigger cock on the planet than Jamie Foxx? No. No there definitely isn’t.

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