Jay-Z has explained why he believed Beyoncé deserved to win Album Of The Year at the 2023 Grammys with her recent album ‘Renaissance’.
The rapper was speaking to Tidal Magazine ahead of the ceremony, which would see Beyoncé controversially lose out on the award to Harry Styles, who took the Grammy home for his album ‘Harry’s House’.
“Look what it’s done to the culture,” Jay-Z said. “Look how the energy of the world moved. They play her whole album in the club. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that. The whole entire joint — like, everything?! Every remix is amazing. Everyone’s inspired. It has inspired the world. Every remix is better than the other one.
He was also asked if he allowed himself to feel confident about the prospect of Beyoncé winning, or if he tried to emotionally remove himself from the process. “Yeah, I remove myself from the process and hope they just get it right. It got to the point where I was like, it’s just a marketing thing. You go, you got an album out and it could help the sales go up. It got to that point, but deep down … Again, we grew up idolizing this. It was like one of the pillars for us. It was like, ‘We want to go Gold.’ Yeah, I’ve been in it that long.”
On the night, Beyoncé broke the record for the most Grammy wins of all time. She won four awards – Best Dance/Electronic Music Album for ‘Renaissance’, Best Dance/Electronic Recording for ‘Break My Soul’, Best Traditional R&B Performance for ‘Plastic Off The Sofa’ and Best R&B Song for ‘Cuff It’ – taking her total Grammy wins to 32.
Despite this, however, she has never won Album Of The Year, despite being nominated four times. She was also nominated for 2008’s ‘I Am… Sasha Fierce’, 2013’s self-titled album and 2016’s ‘Lemonade’.
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Jay-Z closed out the ceremony with a performance of ‘God Did’, alongside DJ Khaled, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, John Legend and Fridayy, among others.