Kanye West has won his 22nd Grammy award, tying Jay-Z for the most awards for a hip-hop artist.
West won Best Contemporary Christian Music Album for 2019’s ‘Jesus Is King’ at last night’s (March 14) ceremony in Los Angeles.
West wasn’t present at the ceremony to collect the award, and has been critical of the Grammys in the past.
Last September, the rapper continued his tirade against label ownership of musicians’ master recordings, saying that Prince and Michael Jackson were “killed” by the music and media industries, and illustrating his point by sharing a video of himself urinating on a Grammy award that had been placed in a toilet.
kanye west really won a whole grammy after doing this 💀💀💀 pic.twitter.com/Lw7yefWAUo
— mariano 🦦⁶𓅓 (@TheRapAgenda) March 14, 2021
Reviewing Kanye’s ‘Jesus Is King’ upon its release in October 2019, NME wrote: “What’s likeable about ‘Jesus Is King’ is its sincerity, and the sense of peace it conveys. 2016’s ‘The Life Of Pablo’ may be West’s greatest – and most enduring – album, a wild tapestry of ideas that, even more than ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’, refuses to age because it pulses with audaciousness.
“It didn’t, though, sound like someone at ease with themselves. Yet there are glimpses of darkness here, too.”
Elsewhere at last night’s Grammys, performances came from Harry Styles, BTS, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B, and Haim, amongst others.
Beyoncé was the big winner of the night, taking home four awards and breaking the record for the most Grammy wins by a female artist and by any singer, male or female. Taylor Swift, meanwhile, became the first woman to win Album Of The Year three times, picking up the biggest award of the evening for ‘folklore’.
The annual In Memoriam segment of the show also saw Brittany Howard, Coldplay‘s Chris Martin, Bruno Mars and more paying tribute to lost stars of the music world.