A previous BET Award winner, 19-year old Chris Brown took home the Best Male R&B Artist honors, gospel juggernaut Marvin Sapp won the award for Best Gospel Artist, and Lil’ Wayne won the coveted Viewers’ Choice Award for his song “Lollipop.” R&B legend Al Green received the Lifetime Achievement award.

West, a previous six-time Grammy winner, garnered the most nods including Album of the Year, Best Rap Album and Best Rap Solo Performance. His songwriting expertise is being recognized twice in the Best Rap Song category for “Good Life” and “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”.

Amy Winehouse, up for six, goes head-to-head with Kanye in the Album of the Year category. Winehouse received nominations including Song of the Year for “Rehab” and the coveted Best New Artist, which she’ll compete with BMI newcomer Taylor Swift.

BMI singer/songwriters dominated the Album of the Year category obtaining all five nominations with the Foo Fighters Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace; Vince Gill’s These Days; Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters; Kanye West’s Graduation; and Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black.

In addition, T-Pain received his first-ever Grammy recognition garnering five nods in categories including Best R&B Performance By A Duo or Group With Vocals and Best Rap Song. Ne-Yo also scored five nominations, including Best Contemporary R&B Album mention for Because of You.

Daughtry, Tim McGraw, Rihanna and Feist scored four nominations each. Daughtry’s explosive self-titled album is up for Best Rock Album; McGraw’s Let It Go received a Best Country Album nod; Rihanna’s “Umbrella” earned a Record of the Year nomination; and Feist scored a Best New Artist nod.

Producer Mark Ronson received three nominations including Producer of the Year, Non-Classical and Record of the Year for his contributions to Winehouse’s Back to Black. Jack White of the White Stripes and Casting Crown's Mark Hall were also cited three times, as were Herbie Hancock, DJ Toomp and Common.

The Recording Academy will also honor Max Roach, The Band and Earl Scruggs with Lifetime Achievement Awards, as well as Jac Holzman and Willie Mitchell with Trustee Awards.

BMI attained a sizable percentage of the rock field achieving four-of-five nominations in the Best Rock Song and the Best Rock Album categories. The domination continued with BMI’s traditional strength in the Latin, Rap & R&B, Gospel, Jazz categories, and sweeps in the New Age and Traditional Blues categories.

T.I., Ne-Yo and Mr. ColliPark each earned Songwriter of the Year titles, “Check On It” secured Song of the Year honors for co-writers Slim Thug and Sean Garrett, and a special presentation officially recognized legendary MC Joseph “Rev Run” Simmons of Run DMC as the newest BMI Icon.

Song List: BMI Award Winners

The night’s other big winners included Pharrell Williams, who earned the Producer of the Year title; EMI Music Publishing, named Urban Publisher of the Year; and T-Pain’s “I’m N Luv (Wit A Stripper),” which nabbed the BMI Urban Ringtone Award. Executives from music trade magazine Billboard were also on hand to give out No. 1 Awards to the BMI songs that reached the top spot on its urban music charts.

T.I., Ne-Yo and Mr. ColliPark each composed four songs on BMI’s most-performed list, and all three of the hitmakers acquired their first BMI Songwriter of the Year crowns. T.I. co-wrote hits “My Love” and “What You Know,” along with Lil' C’s “Shoulder Lean” and Nelly’s “Grillz”; Ne-Yo co-penned Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable” and his own “Sexy Love,” “So Sick” and “When You’re Mad”; and Mr. ColliPark co-wrote the Ying Yang Twins’ “Badd,” Diddy’s “Come to Me,” Bubba Sparxxx’s “Ms. New Booty” and David Banner’s “Play.”

Slim Thug and Sean Garrett’s “Check On It” earned Song of the Year. Published by Publisher of the Year EMI-Blackwood Music, Inc., “Check On It” was recorded by Beyoncé and featured the vocal stylings of co-writer Slim Thug.

As one third of Run-DMC, Rev Run helped change the sound of rap by simultaneously being more street and rock & roll than his contemporaries. From the boom-box classic single “Sucker MCs” (1983) to their standard-setting discs Run-DMC, King of Rock, Raising Hell and Tougher Than Leather, Run-DMC defined a new level of cool for the world. Dressed in their trademark black hats and outfits to match, Run-DMC stayed at the top of the pop charts for most of the ’80s and knocked open the doors to commercial freedom for the rap generation. A multi-media star — he stars in his own television show, Run’s House — Rev Run continues to create music, having just released his CD Distortion on the Russell Simmons Music Group (RSMG).

Pharrell Williams earned his third BMI Producer of the Year title for logging the most producer credits on charting songs. The BMI Top Urban Producers list also included Rodney Jerkins, Polow Da Don, Jazze Pha, Kanye West, will.i.am, Lil Jon, Sean Garrett and T-Pain.

EMI Music Publishing was named BMI Urban Publisher of the Year by scoring the highest percentage of copyright ownership in award songs. The publishing giant’s hits included chart toppers “Irreplaceable,” “Déjà Vu,” “Money Maker,” “Snap Yo Fingers” and more.

“I’m N Luv (Wit A Stripper),” co-written and performed by BMI Top Urban Producer T-Pain and Mike Jones and published by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. and Zomba Songs, received the BMI Urban Ringtone Award for tallying the most downloads during the award period.

In addition to the BMI performance awards, Billboard recognized the BMI-affiliated writers whose songs reached No. 1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, Hot Rap Tracks, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and Hot 100 charts during the past year.

Born in Tallahassee, Florida to Muslim parents, T-Pain — born Faheem Najm — had music in his blood. His father was a rapper he describes as “like Kurtis Blow.” By age 10, the self-described target of bullies had put aside his wooden dinosaur collectables and reworked his bedroom into a small studio. Armed with a keyboard, a beat machine and an 8-track, Faheem got to work preparing for his future.

Years later, Faheem — whose stage moniker “T-Pain” means “Tallahassee Pain” or “Teddy Pain” in homage to Teddy Pendergrass — was a fully committed recording artist. He was a member of a rap group called Nappy Headz, a clique that enjoyed moderate success with the song “Robbery.” T-Pain’s affiliation with that group would be short-lived, though, perhaps because, as he has said, he was growing tired of the walls between hip-hop and soul.

In 2004, Akon, the Senegalese singer with a hip-hop bent, released his song “Locked Up.” Shortly thereafter, an industrious T-Pain recorded a response, “F***ed Up.” The song got heavy rotation in his home state, and, naturally, the bootleg crept out of its local market. In time, the song made its way into the ears of Akon, in Atlanta. Impressed, Akon signed T-Pain to his Konvict Music imprint, and suddenly, at 19, T-Pain was a solo artist.

It wasn’t long after signing a deal — about 10 months, in fact — before T-Pain had crafted his first big solo hit, “I’m Sprung,” in 2005, which established him as a contemporary r&b artist with a stand-out vision and sound. Lyrically, “I’m Sprung” imagined a guy who didn’t mind doing dishes, neglecting his friends and ignoring other women for a newfound crush. It managed to be sappy, masculine and insanely catchy at the same time, and the song hit the Top Ten in three Billboard charts, including No. 3 on Rhythmic Top 40. Written and performed by T-Pain, the song blended a thunderous 808 beat, old soul music and the vocal manipulations of the vocoder into something unique. “I just got tired of turning on the radio and everything just sounding the same,” he has said.

He wasn’t done. The second single off his appropriately titled debut album, Rappa Ternt Sanga, was “I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper).” Again capitalizing off the mutant-techno strains of the vocoder, the song celebrated the intense (if fleeting) infatuation men experience when going to a gentlemen’s club. Merging the same elements that made “I’m Sprung” a smash, the tune hit the Top Ten in five Billboard charts. Perhaps more lucrative, though, was its street appeal; the song became an obvious favorite in hangouts staffed by exotic dancers and the men who love them. He’d earned a loyal following. He told MTV.com, “There’s finally a song about strippers that ain’t degrading. It’s a song that’s appreciating strippers.”

Although his first big radio hits seemed to unapologetically embrace the frivolous, the 23-year-old T-Pain is actually a married, family man with an eye towards self-preservation. That’s probably why his newest effort, “Epiphany,” reflects maturation in both in a work ethic and the themes he chooses to embrace. The first single from his sophomore effort, “Buy U A Drank,” is largely self-explanatory, but then it isn’t — T-Pain isn’t crude or overtly sexual but simply flirtatious and seductive, much like his music, so seductive that “Buy U A Drank” beat out tunes by Avril Lavigne, Beyonce and even his pal Akon to become being the No. 1 ringtone on Billboard’s RingMaster’s chart for two consecutive weeks in April. But T-Pain gets serious too, with tunes including “Suicide,” about the potential pitfalls that today’s youth face.

“Having sex without condoms, driving drunk, selling drugs, all that is ‘Suicide’,” he says. “We do a lot of stupid stuff that only has one ending.”

Having relocated with his wife and daughter to Atlanta and recently spending time in London, T-Pain’s mind seems open to more possibilities. The two studios he has built in his basement are open too: He’s gearing up to work with major artists including R. Kelly, Kanye West, Usher, Chris Brown and Britney Spears. Though he’s nicknamed himself after Teddy Pendergrass, he is, in fact, an artist who is cultivating a lasting legacy of his own.