We often talk about giving people their flowers while they are still alive to smell them, but during the 2025 VMAs, Busta Rhymes reminded us how important it is give them their flowers even after they have passed.
While accepting MTIV’s first-ever “Rock the Bells Visionary Award,” the rapper took a moment to honor the late MTV VJ and host Ananda Lewis.
“I want to thank…and I think we all need to acknowledge the incredible woman that loved us very much when we came to MTV during the 90s,” the rapper said during his acceptance speech. “An incredible woman that loved me, and she loved us. She loved the culture very much. I miss her very much–the late, great, incredible, royal empress, Ananda Lewis.”
Lewis died at 52 years old in June, after a long battle with breast cancer. The Howard University alum got her start in media as a host of the BET teen television talk show, “Teen Summit,” before becoming a staple on MTV, hosting a variety of the network’s shows and live programming.
In 2020, the media personality publicly revealed that she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. While she continuously urged women to get mammograms and prioritize preventative care, Lewis took an unconventional approach to her cancer treatment, declining a double mastectomy and opting for homeopathic care methods. Despite receiving a lot of backlash for her choices as her cancer spread, Lewis remained firm and confident in her decision a sentiment she shared publicly and with her family and friends towards the end of her life.
“You know my feelings on this. We all go. These bodies are all loans and must be returned. We come in love and choose to leave it with love as well,” Lewis’ best friend and CNN journalist Stephanie Elam said, sharing the star’s final message to her. “One thing I want everyone to know is that she was at peace with this decision. She had come to grips with it…She wanted to go after cancer the way she did it. And I love my girl, but she’s hard-headed and she wanted to do it her own way, despite the fact that so many of us close to her wanted her to try [traditional treatments]. This is what she wanted to do.”
In January 2025, Lewis echoed these sentiments in an interview with Essence: “We’re not meant to stay here forever. We come to this life, have experiences—and then we go. Being real about that with yourself changes how you choose to live. I don’t want to spend one more minute than I have to suffering unnecessarily. That, for me, is not the quality of life I’m interested in. When it’s time for me to go, I want to be able to look back on my life and say, I did that exactly how I wanted to. We all have that right. I know I’ve done the right thing for me. It might not be the right thing for anybody else, but it doesn’t have to be.”
