Beyonce wins Video of the Year for 'Formation' at MTV Video Music Awards

Beyonce has stolen the spotlight at the MTV Video Music Awards, winning Video of the Year for her single "Formation"; the most politically charged song of her career.

Beyonce, who was up for the most awards in the night at 11, brought a surprise entourage to watch at New York's Madison Square Garden -- the mothers of four young black men whose deaths have galvanized the US public in recent years.

She later took the stage with a medley of songs from her intertwined album-film "Lemonade," starting with Bey in a haze of fog and culminating in fire.

Toward the end of a more than 15-minute set, the sound of a single shot rang out as her circle of dancers fall one-by-one and turn to red.

Her album "Lemonade" features the mothers of three slain young African American men whose mothers joined her in the audience -- Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin. The mother of a fourth man, Oscar Grant, also joined her.

Martin, 17, was killed in 2012 by a white neighborhood guard, helping trigger the Black Lives Matter movement. Brown, Garner and Grant were all killed by law enforcement.