Music

Victoria Monét won best new artist during the Sunday (Feb. 4) Grammy Awards, which were held in Los Angeles, besting fellow nominees including Noah Kahan, Ice Spice and Jelly Roll.

Monét, who was nominated for seven accolades, took the stage to accept the all-genre award, receiving rapturous applause from the audience. Monét thanked the Recording Academy voting members, saying, “This is because of you guys. You guys pressed that button. We were in your emails. Thank you so much. Thank you to my mom, a single mom raising this really bad girl. Thank you so much. I just want to say to everybody who has a dream, I want you to look at this as an example.”

Drawing a deep breath she added, “Thank you, God … This award was a 15-year pursuit. I moved to L.A. in 2009, and I like to liken myself to a plant who was planted. And you can look at the music industry as soil, and it can be looked at as dirty, or it can be looked at as a source of nutrients and water. My roots have been growing underneath ground unseen for so long. And I feel like today, I’m sprouting finally above ground.”

Monét continued, “I’d like to thank my team of visionaries who could see through that soil.” She spoke of the vision that her manager, Rachelle Jean-Louis, had. “There was a binder that I made to take this really important meeting out of label, and I thought I was going to be signed and I was an independent artist with no team, and I just thought, ‘Maybe my music would stand for itself.’ But that binder left collecting dust in her office and a label, and Rachelle found that binder and she decided to take a chance, leave that label and be my manager. So thank you so much for seeing me.”

The all-genre best new artist trophy wasn’t the only Grammy Monét picked up Sunday evening. Monét’s album Jaguar II also won for best R&B album; the set also won for best engineered album, non-classical.

In December, Monét’s “On My Mama” hit No. 1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, and reached No. 35 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Stevie Wonder, Annie Lennox and Jon Batiste were among those honoring the lives and careers of late music icons during the Grammy Awards on Sunday (Feb. 4) in Los Angeles.

Wonder honored the late, legendary performer Tony Bennett, who died July 21, 2023, at age 96. Wonder performed “The Best Is Yet to Come,” as well as “For Once in My Life,” the latter as a “duet” with Bennett, with footage of the late artist performing on a big screen. Bennett recorded “For Once in My Life” in 1967, with Wonder’s version of the song releasing in 1968.

Wonder celebrated Bennett’s “love for art, his love for peace, his love for unity, his love for civil rights.” He added, “Tony, I’m going to miss you forever.”

Lennox teamed with duo Wendy & Lisa to fete the late Sinead O’Connor with a rendition of her hit “Nothing Compares 2 You.” Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman were part of Prince’s band The Revolution (the late Prince wrote “Nothing Compares 2 U”). Lennox ended her performance by calling for a ceasefire and asking for world peace, another nod to O’Connor’s own activism. The Irish singer-songwriter died on July 26, 2023, at age 56.

As each musician performed, the names and photos of numerous artists, songwriters, performers and music executives who passed away in the past year scrolled across screens, as the Grammys honored Jimmy Buffett, Chita Rivera, Burt Bacharach, songwriter Cynthia Weil, rapper Magoo, as well as executives including country music radio executive Charlie Monk, A&M Records co-founder Jerry Moss, Sire Records’ Seymour Stein and more.

Lenny Kravitz appeared to honor Clarence Avant, known as “The Godfather of Black Music,” who died in August 2023 at age 92. Avant played key roles in labels including Venture Records and Sussex Records, and managed artists including Little Willie John and Jimmy Smith. Kravitz called Avant “a trusted mentor and believer in the likes of Quincy Jones and Bill Withers, just to name a few.”

The In Memoriam section continued as Batiste joined with Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis and Ann Nesby and Cory Henry for a soulful, uplifting performance that included “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Lean on Me” and “Optimistic,” featuring soul-searing vocals from Nesby. Later in the evening, Fantasia Barrino and Oprah Winfrey feted late entertainer Tina Turner.

Jay-Z arrived to the 2024 Grammys Sunday (Feb. 4) to accept the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award, bringing wife Beyoncè and daughter Blue Ivy with him.

Taking the stage at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles with Blue Ivy to make his speech, Jay-Z first thanked the award’s namesake — who was watching from the audience — acknowledging Dr. Dre, saying that “all the doors that you opened showed us we could be rock stars.”

Jay-Z then thanked the Grammys’ Black Music Collective for “all the work you guys do … how far we’ve come since Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff winning their first Grammy in ’89 and boycotting because [the award] wasn’t televised.” Jay then joked that Smith and Jeff “went to a hotel and watched the Grammys … it wasn’t a great boycott.” The camera then panned to Meryl Streep laughing hard in the audience.

Jay-Z’s speech then started to get spicy. “Then in ’98, I took a page out of their book. I was nominated for best rap album, and DMX had dropped two albums that year, they both were No. 1 — shout out to DMX — and he wasn’t nominated at all, so I boycotted, and” — he said with a laugh — “I watched the Grammys.”

Jay’s message then took a more serious tone as he continued, “I’m just saying, we want y’all to get it right. We love y’all; we love y’all; we want you to get it right, or at least get it close to right, and obviously it’s subjective … because it’s music and it’s opinion-based, but some things — I don’t wan to embarrass this young lady” — referring to Beyoncè — “but she has more Grammys than everyone and never won album of the year, so even by your own metrics that doesn’t work. Think about that. The most Grammys and never won an album of the year. That doesn’t work.

“Some of you are going to go home tonight and feel like you’ve been robbed,” he continued. “Some of you may get robbed, some of you don’t belong in the category — when I get nervous I tell the truth.

“But outside of that, we’ve gotta keep showing up. And forget the Grammys for a second, just in life — as my daughter sits and stares at me nervous as I am — just in life, you’ve gotta keep showing up and keep showing up. Forget the Grammys. You’ve got to keep showing up until they give you all those accolades you feel you deserve, until they call you ‘chairman,’ until they call you a ‘genius,’ until they call you ‘the greatest of all time.’ You feel me?”