Drake and Rihanna kiss on stage

The 29-year-old rapper confessed his feelings for the “Diamonds” hitmaker on stage in front of the world as he presented her with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) at Madison Square Garden in NY on Sunday (08.28.16) night.

The audience at Madison Square Garden watched intensely Sunday, at times recording the performance with their phones.

Beyonce had a large entourage with her on the red carpet including the mothers of gun violence victims in the United States such as Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin who was killed by a neighbourhood watch volunteer in 2012.

Though Rihannah is sometimes been accused of seeming more like a vessel for producers than anything else, a unified and singular vision at work, a vision that the VMAs then connected with her hugely fun back catalogue. She was presented with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award by Canadian rapper Drake – with whom she has often been romantically linked.

A few months after the Lucky Strike sighting, Rihanna told DJ Angie Martinez that she and Drake were just friends.

Rihanna, the VMAs star award recipient, celebrated her lifetime-achievement Moonman with not one performance but a total of four genre-spanning medleys.

Brit looked as hot as ever in her sparkly yellow outfit as she writhed around on the floor belting out her new hit Make Me.

You know, like, people come up to me like, ‘Man, that’s right…

In the middle of all of this, Kanye West materialized to introduce his new music video, and he managed to sum up the entire night with one bull’s eye phrase in an otherwise wayward speech: “This is fame, bruh!” He talked about his “Famous” video which features what appear to be naked images of West, Swift, Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump and more.

The next performance featured a psychedelic rendition of “Needed Me” and positively bad a** versions of “Pour It Up” and “B***h Better Have My Money”. “Bro, like I love all y’all”. “I love you”, Beyonce said.

After their first hookup took place at the Lucky Strike bowling alley in New York City, Rihanna was quick to quash the rumors that they were actually together. “There’s less than 10 that I can name in history: Truman, Ford, Hughes, Disney, Jobs, West”.

And four members of the Final Five gymnastics team fan-girled out onstage when they got to hand over the award to Beyonce for best female video. I’m standing in front of my wife, Kim Kardashian-West.

This time, dressed in a sparkly gold leotard and matching over-the-knee boots, she performed a duet with rapper G-Eazy.

As previously reported, Beyoncé took home eight awards, leaving a couple awards for other artists in categories like Drake’s win for Best Hip-Hop Video and David Bowie’s posthumous award for Best Art Direction for the “Lazarus” video.

Alicia Keys announced the victor of the award after giving a passionate A Capella performance of a poem on the 53rd anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech.

Most of the night’s presenters – besides members of the USA’s Olympic team, such as Michael Phelps and Simone Biles – were also met with indifference.

At Rihanna’s Miami concert for her Anti tour, Drake showed up for a rendition of their hit collaboration, “Work”.