The 1990 MTV Video Music Awards aired live on September 6, 1990, honoring the best music videos from June 2, 1989, to June 1, 1990. The show was hosted by Arsenio Hall at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles.

This year saw the elimination of yet another one of the show's original categories, Best Stage Performance in a Video. This would turn out to be the last time an award from 1984 would be permanently eliminated (although Breakthrough Video was eliminated in 2006 and then brought back in 2009).

For the second year in a row, Madonna was one of the night's biggest winners, taking home three technical awards, while Sinéad O'Connor was the other most rewarded artist of 1990, also winning three Moonmen including Video of the Year. Meanwhile, most other winners that night took home two awards, including Aerosmith, Don Henley, The B-52s, Tears for Fears, and MC Hammer.

Regarding nominations, Madonna also had the distinction of being the most nominated artist of the night, as her video for "Vogue" received nine nominations, making it also the most nominated video of 1990. In fact, this marks the very first time in VMA history that the most nominated artist achieves this distinction with nominations for only one video. Closely following in nominations came Aerosmith, whose video for "Janie's Got a Gun" earned eight nominations that night and took home two awards, including Viewer's Choice.

An MTV Video Music Award (commonly abbreviated as a VMA), is an award presented by the cable channel MTV to honor the best in music videos. Originally conceived as an alternative to the Grammy Awards (in the video category), the annual MTV Video Music Awards ceremony has often been called the "Oscars for youth", an acknowledgment of the VMA ceremony's ability to draw millions of youth from teens to 20-somethings each year. By 2001, the VMA had become a coveted award. The statue given to winners is an astronaut on the moon, one of the earliest representations of MTV.

The annual VMA ceremony is usually held in mid-September, and broadcast live on MTV. The first VMA ceremony was held in 1984 at New York City's Radio City Music Hall. Other VMAs have been held in Los Angeles, Miami, and Las Vegas. The 2012 MTV Video Music Awards will air live on Thursday, September 6, 2012.

The VMAs have been a generational pop-cultural annual award show that gathers the most popular bands and artists each year. For years, the show was noteworthy for its live controversial moments (some cut for the re-runs); it quickly gained popularity because of them, rather than the awards given.

Robert Matthew Van Winkle (born October 31, 1967), best known by his stage name Vanilla Ice, is an American rapper. Born in South Dallas, and raised in Texas and South Florida, Van Winkle released his debut album, Hooked, in 1989 through Ichiban Records, before signing a contract with SBK Records, a record label of the EMI Group which released a reformatted version of the album under the title To the Extreme. Van Winkle's single "Ice Ice Baby" was the first hip hop single to top the Billboard charts.

Although Van Winkle was successful, he later regretted his business arrangements with SBK, which had paid him to adopt a more commercial appearance to appeal to a mass audience and published fabricated biographical information without his knowledge. After surviving a suicide attempt, Van Winkle was inspired to change his musical style and lifestyle. While later albums by Van Winkle haven't charted or featured much radio airplay because of their less mainstream, rock-oriented sound, Vanilla Ice has had a loyal underground following. In 2009, Van Winkle began hosting The Vanilla Ice Project on DIY Network. His latest album WTF – Wisdom, Tenacity & Focus was released in August 2011. Van Winkle is currently signed to Psychopathic Records.

Robert Barisford "Bobby" Brown (born February 5, 1969) is an American R&B singer-songwriter, occasional rapper, and dancer.

Brown started his career as one of the frontmen of the pop group New Edition, from its inception as The Bricks in 1978 until his forced exit from the group in 1986 following a period of misbehavior on his part. Starting a solo career, he became a hit success with his second album, Don't Be Cruel, which spawned a number of hit singles including the co-self penned "My Prerogative", which became his signature hit. Brown had a string of top ten hits on various Billboard charts between 1986 and 1992, and is a recipient of a Grammy Award. Brown is noted as a pioneer of New Jack Swing music, a fusion of hip-hop and R&B.

Brown was most noted in recent years as the ex-husband of pop singer Whitney Houston. Brown and Houston later gained notoriety co-starring in the reality show, Being Bobby Brown.

Brown was born in Boston as one of eight children to Herbert "Pops" and Carole Brown. Herbert was a construction worker and Carole was a schoolteacher. Brown and his family grew up in Roxbury's Orchard Park Projects. As a child, Brown got involved in petty theft including robbery later saying "I didn't wanna ask my mother or my father because they didn't have a lot of money", stating that whenever he saw something he wanted, "I'd just go to the store and take it." Brown also grew up around gangs. At ten, he was shot in the knee during a fight with a rival gang while attending a block party. Brown said his life reached a turning point at eleven after seeing one of his friends dead from multiple stab wounds at another party. Brown's brother Tommy would later say after that moment, Brown took "his career, schooling, his whole life more seriously." Brown's first taste of being onstage occurred at the age of three when one of his childhood idols, James Brown, performed in Boston.

Janet Damita Jo Jackson (born May 16, 1966) is an American recording artist and actress. Known for a series of sonically innovative, socially conscious and sexually provocative records, as well as elaborate stage shows, television and film roles, she has been a prominent figure in popular culture for over 25 years. The youngest child of the Jackson family, she began her career with the variety television series The Jacksons in 1976 and went on to appear in other television shows throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, including Good Times and Fame.

After signing a recording contract with A&M in 1982, she came to prominence following the release of her third studio album Control (1986). Her collaborations with record producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis incorporated elements of rhythm and blues, funk, disco, rap, and industrial beats, which led to crossover appeal in popular music. In addition to receiving recognition for the innovation in her records, choreography, music videos, and prominence on radio airplay and MTV, she was acknowledged as a role model for her socially conscious lyrics.