Spears Sweeps, Brand Bashes Bush at VMAs

Fresh off his record-breaking performance at the 2008 Summer Olympics, Michael Phelps visited the VMAs to introduce record-breaking (and his professed favorite) rapper Lil Wayne, who sold a million copies of "Tha Carter III" in one week earlier this year, making the album the first studio offering since 50 Cent's 2005 "The Massacre" to sell more than a million copies in a single week.

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After rapping his hit "Got Money" with T Pain, Lil Wayne returned to rock the stage with Kid Rock, performing "All Summer Long."

Rapper T.I. returned to the awards show stage after his arrest at 2007's BET awards, where he was accused of attempting to buy machine guns and silencers. In March, he was sentenced to serve time in prison for that offense, after completing at least 1,000 hours of community service.

Kanye West closed the show with a crowd-rousing performance of his new song, "Love Lockdown." West, like Spears, revisited the VMAs after a headline-making fiasco at last year's ceremony, in which he went ballistic backstage after not scoring a Moonman despite scores of nominations for his latest album, "Graduation." If she returned with a whimper, he came back with a bang.

Last year, 7.1 million MTV viewers watched the festivities, according to Nielsen Media Research. Viewership was up from 5.8 million the year before, according to Reuters, but the numbers were a far cry from the record 12 million viewers for the 1999 version.