Pop culture’s hottest and brightest superstars received their flowers at The Recording Academy’s 65th Annual Grammy Awards show hosted by Trevor Noah. Crypto.com Arena in the heart of Los Angeles, California, captured this year’s biggest night in music, which aired last night (Sunday, Feb. 5) on CBS.
Leading up to her highly anticipated global world tour kicking off this May, Beyoncé broke records for winning her 32nd Grammy, becoming the most awarded artist in The Academy’s longstanding history. She took home four awards related to her Renaissance album including Best Dance/Electronic Recording, Best Traditional R&B Performance and Best R&B song.
She wasn’t in the building yet to receive her first award of the evening, Best R&B song for “Cuff It”. The Dream and Niles Rodgers accepted the award on her behalf for their contributions to the hit.
Fans criticized The Dream for his remarks about Beyoncé running late.
“Y’all know n****s be on CP time,” The-Dream said. “Beyoncé thanks y’all.”
A lot of fans argued there’s a time and a place to say certain things, and it shouldn’t be saying the N-word, in a room full of white people, on national television.
Rodgers said he knew he wanted to play on the song the moment he heard it.
Beyoncé also took home the award for Best Dance/Electronic Music Album. ”I’d like to thank my Uncle Johnny, who’s not here, but he’s here in spirit … I’d like to thank the queer community for your love and for inventing this genre,” she said in her acceptance speech.
Viola Davis, who presented the Best R&B song award, also made history in a pre-telecast ceremony. She reached EGOT status, crowned the 18th person to win all four of the most coveted awards in the commercial entertainment world (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony). She is also the third Black woman to have the honor. (Jennifer Hudson and Whoopi Goldberg are also EGOT recipients).
Davis took home a Grammy for audiobook narration and storytelling of her best-selling autobiography, “Finding Me.”
“I wrote this book to honor the six-year-old Viola,” she said during the ceremony.“To honor her life, her joy, her trauma, everything. And, it has just been such a journey — I just EGOT!”
Motown legends and longtime friends Smokey Robinson and Berry Gordy, were crowned the 2023 MusiCares Persons of the Year for their timeless contributions and philanthropic efforts to the industry.
Fellow Motown icon Stevie Wonder joined Robinson, WanMor (sons of Boyz II Men’s Wanya Morris), and country singer Chris Stapleton in a medley of classics including “The Way You Do the Things You Do”, “Tears of A Clown”, and “Higher Ground.”
Lizzo, who won “Record of the Year” for her single “About Damn Time”, is the first Black woman to win the honor since Whitney Houston won in 1994 for “I Will Always Love You.”
“I want to dedicate this award to Prince,” Lizzo said in her acceptance speech. “When we lost Prince I decided to dedicate my life to making positive music. I stayed true to myself because I wanted to make the world a better place, so I had to be that change to make the world a better place.
In addition to taking home ROTY, Lizzo, and an all-Black-women choir, performed an uplifting production of “About Damn Time” and “Special” dressed in black and gold.
Cardi B presented Best Rap Album to Kendrick Lamar for “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.”
“First and foremost, I wanna thank my family for giving me the courage and vulnerability to share these stories, and share my truth with this album,” Lamar said in his speech. “I would like to thank the culture for allowing me to evolve in order to make a song like [“Mother I Sober”], that’s special to me. All we ever really wanted was to be the biggest underground artists of all time. I finally found imperfection with this album. I appreciate y’all love y’all.”
Lamar also won Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance for “The Heart Part 5.”
Fallen stars we lost last year and early this year who were memorialized in a musical and film tribute, included Barrett Strong, Fred E. White, and Thom Bell. Quavo did an emotional performance of his latest single “Without You,” dedicated to his nephew and late group member Takeoff, who was murdered last year in Houston, during a dice game argument. Gospel group, Maverick City Music, backed vocals for Quavo, in a stirring performance. Noticeably, Offset, who is also part of Migos, didn’t perform alongside Quavo.
Many were not pleased with Three 6 Mafia’s Gangsta Boo’s name and picture being omitted from the tribute.
A new award in coordination with Black Music Collective was introduced. The Dr. Dre Global Impact Award, which recognizes contributors, creators, and professionals with a proven track record of uplifting Black music.
West Coast legend Dr. Dre accepted the new award named in his honor, and thanked hip hop culture for his monumental career.
“Hip Hop became a lifeline for me as a teenager growing up in Compton,” he said. “It started with a song called “[The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel].” Scratching and mixing on the turntables had me hooked, and became the entry point for a 40-year career of doing something that I really love. Much of what I love is involved with collaboration. What I love about this award is, it uses my name to inspire the next generation of producers, artists and entrepreneurs, to reach for their greatness and demand that everyone around you never compromise your vision, pursue quality over quantity, and remember everything is important.”
A 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop tribute took off following Dre’s acceptance speech. It was a multi-generational celebration of the genre, featuring several pioneers and newcomers from Run-DMC to St. Louis’ own Nelly, who sported his signature face bandaid, popular from the early 2000s, to hip hop’s newest sensation, GloRilla. There was a mix of different eras spotlit. However, there were several groundbreaking emcees who disappointedly weren’t featured. How can a 50th hip hop anniversary happen without A Tribe Called Quest, Lil Kim, Foxy Brown, Bad Boy, So So Def, Three 6 Mafia, Cash Money, Young Money, and many others?
While the tribute was incredible, it missed the mark by not including some of Hip Hop culture’s most influential stars and most memorable movements like the crunk/snap era, etc.
Country singer Bonnie Raitt was shocked when she was awarded “Song of the Year.” Her win took everyone by surprise, beating out Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul,” which most were confident would be the chosen winner.
Song of the Year was a slight snub for Beyoncé. Her biggest snub of the night was losing “Album of the Year” to Harry Styles. This was her fourth time being nominated for the category, and once again losing to a white artist.
Rising jazz artist and Gen Z’s first jazz star, Samara Joy won Best New Artist and Best Jazz Vocal Album. The budding icon was lost for words at the beginning of her speech, but aptly described the sublime feeling she and many experience when given what many musicians believe to be the penultimate honor in the music industry.
“Thank you so much for this honor. Thank you to everyone who has listened to me or supported me,” Joy said. “All of you are so inspiring to me, and so to be here, because of who I am, because of who you are… to be here, just being who I was born to be, by being myself, I’m so thankful.”
Steve Lacy and Thundercat were among the notable performances of the night with their production of “Bad Habit” and DJ Khaled’s “God Did” featuring Jay Z, Rick Ross, John Legend, and Lil Wayne, as well as their hip hop rendition of “The Last Supper.”.
Prior to the televised awards ceremony, Chris Brown threw a temper tantrum for losing to Robert Glasper in the Best R&B album. He questioned who Glasper was and why he deserved the award.
Read the full list of GRAMMY winners and nominees on cbs.com.
CBS, Yahoo, BET, ET Online, Huffington Post, USA Today, The Jasmine Brand contributed to this story.