Jay-Z Calls Out Grammy Awards for Beyoncé Snubs: ‘The Most Grammys, Never Won Album of the Year’
During tonight’s Grammys ceremony, Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter accepted the second-ever Dr. Dre Global Impact Award, after Dre himself took home the honor in 2023. Yet Carter used his allotted time not to run through the highlights of his own career, but to point out the discrepancies in his wife’s. Initially, he kept the tone of his speech light: After he led the couple’s oldest daughter, Blue Ivy, onto the stage with him, Carter joked he could use the latest trophy as a “sippy club for Blue,” despite the fact that she’s “grown up now, she doesn’t take sippy cups, and she has her own Grammys.” (The joke was an allusion to his 2014 Grammys win, during which he told fans he’d won a “gold sippy cup” for the then-2-year-old Blue.)
But after thanking his colleagues and contemporaries, Carter directed his speech toward the Grammys themselves, starting with his own nomination for Best Rap Album in 1998. That year, he explained, DMX had dropped two albums, “and he wasn’t nominated at all, so I boycotted.” Carter continued, “I’m just saying: We want [the Grammys] to get it right. We love y’all, we love y’all, we want y’all to get it right. At least get it close to right. And obviously it’s subjective. Obviously it’s subjective because, you know, it’s music and it’s opinion-based. But some things, you know.”
He then nodded toward Beyoncé—who was watching her husband and daughter from the audience, perhaps a bit nervously—and continued: “I don’t want to embarrass this young lady [Beyoncé], 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, never won Album of the Year. That doesn’t work.”
For quick context: Beyoncé is the most-nominated female artist in Grammys history, and in 2023, she became the winningest artist in Grammys history—boasting a total of 32 “gold sippy cups.” Not a single one of them is for Album of the Year.
Carter added, “Some of you gonna go home tonight and feel like you’ve been robbed; some of you may get robbed. Some of you don’t belong in the category. No, when I get nervous, I tell the truth.”
As Beyoncé laughed from just a few feet away, he finished the speech, telling the audience, “Outside of that, you know, we 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 gotta keep showing up. Just keep showing up. Forget the Grammys, you 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? Thank you.” In other words: Give the Carters the sippy cups they deserve.
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