Hip-Hop Awards Show Will Air on TV Despite Fights; Police Seek Rapper

A day after the rap world’s marquee awards event was cut short by a chaotic brawl, Pasadena police announced Wednesday that they were seeking Bay Area rapper E-40 as the suspect in a felony assault that left a 29-year-old rival briefly hospitalized with face injuries.

Organizers of the second annual Source Hip-Hop Music Awards, meanwhile, were scrambling to complete a taping of the interrupted show, which police shut down less than halfway through after fights created havoc in the aisles of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium .

No arrests were made Tuesday night, but police say they are seeking E-40, whose given name is Earl Stevens, as the suspect in the assault against Andre Dow of San Francisco. Dow is a former collaborator of the 32-year-old rapper, but the men had a falling out several years ago and have since sued each other, police said.

“During a melee, [Dow] was hit several times in the head and body,” said Pasadena Police Lt. Rick Aversano. “His friends got him out of the auditorium and to his hotel.”

Aversano said Dow had been treated at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank for face wounds.

Despite televised images of audience members stomping and punching one another, a city official in charge of the civic auditorium said the episode had been overblown.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” said Roger Smith, chief executive of Pasadena Center Operating Co.

“I’m getting calls, ‘How bad was it? Was anything destroyed?’ ” he said. “Nothing was destroyed. People walking out were saying, ‘It’s too bad five people ruined it for everyone else.’ ”

But police said the unruliness compelled them to stop the show after only five of the 15 scheduled award presentations had been made. Some of the biggest acts slated to perform--such as Dr. Dre, Eminem, Method Man, Redman and Snoop Dogg--never reached the stage.

There was “no apparent hope of continuing the show peacefully,” said Janet Pope, police spokeswoman. “The majority of the audience was very cooperative and left the auditorium without incident.”

E-40--who has three gold albums to his credit and an album titled “Loyalty and Betrayal” due out in October--is the only suspect being sought by police, although several fights broke out at the event.

Show organizers were struggling with an uncooperative audience from the beginning. The taping had been scheduled to begin at 5 p.m., but it was well after 6 when executive producer Michael Elliott, looking harried, took to the stage to implore audience members to stop milling about in the lobby and aisles.

Elliott pointed out that the show was a chance for the hip-hop community to shine.

Before the show, there was a scuffle near the red-carpet area and police briefly detained rapper DJ Quik. And early in the taping there was yet another altercation near the center aisle.

Police said they made no arrests in those early confrontations because their “main goal was to disperse the fights and keep it orderly for show to go on,” Pope said. The department stationed 35 officers in the auditorium, which also was protected by private security guards and metal detectors.

But it was about 8 p.m., shortly after the group Mobb Deep performed with Lil’ Kim, when the night’s biggest fight broke out, sending most of the audience streaming to exits.

Police said they were prompted to pull the plug on the show when about 75 people, including a group of men wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “Death Row Records,” jumped to the stage. The record label is associated with some of rap’s big hits, as well as some of its most violent history.

After announcing the cancellation, police said, angry attendees threw CD cases, water bottles and other debris from balcony seats, which were occupied largely by winners of radio promotions and other contests that offered access to the exclusive industry event.

The evening was a bruising moment for Source, the magazine that lends its name to the event. As rap has become a commercial powerhouse in the music industry, Source has carved out a role as the genre’s leading publication.

The magazine now outsells Rolling Stone and Spin magazines at newsstands, but the awards show is a key to its reaching broader audiences. A statement from the show’s makers called the incidents “embarrassing.”

The show is still scheduled to air in a two-hour time slot Tuesday night on UPN, a network spokesman person said. The show, which had a $3-million production budget, is a key broadcast for the network and last year had the best Friday night ratings in the network’s history. More segments with be taped in upcoming days and edited into the broadcast.

Asked Wednesday if the show would be welcomed back to the auditorium next year, Smith, the venue chief, said: “I haven’t even thought about it.”

UPN officials would not comment on whether Tuesday night’s melee would affect the long-term future of their association with the event. But one industry insider said the bad press may actually give the show a short-term boost.

“It might or might not help, but I don’t think it will hurt the show,” said Bill Carroll, vice president and director of programming for the Katz Television Group, a consulting firm.

“There might be some folks who would not have tuned in before who will sample it now just to see it because of the unusual events,” he said.

“It’s a shame, though, because it lets those people who think that there’s a certain violence at the core of hip-hop and rap to say, ‘Look, I told you so.’ ”

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Times staff writer Joe Mozingo and Times correspondent Soren Baker also contributed to this story.