Kelly Rowland is on team Jay-Z. The Destiny’s Child member and solo star spoke to ET at the red carpet L.A. premiere of the Bob Marley biopic One Love, where she was asked about Jay’s surprise comments castigating the Recording Academy for never awarding wife Beyoncé an album of the year Grammy.
“Shawn Carter [Jay-Z’s real name] is one of the greatest men I know and his words ring so loud to me,” Rowland said. “I couldn’t be more proud of him.” While accepting his Dr. Dre Global Impact Award at Sunday’s Grammys, Jay surprise pivoted to a love/hate sidebar about Bey, who was sitting in the audience at the Crypto.com Arena.
“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 want to embarrass this young lady,” he said 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.”
Rowland added, “I’m just really happy for a lot of things that he said. I think that he made a lot of artists feel very seen and very heard in those minutes that he took on stage.”
For the record, Beyoncé has a record 32 Grammy wins on her resumé, but she has never won the coveted album of the year award. “I feel like she is an icon… and that’s for a reason — it’s because she starts trends,” Rowland told ET. “She is innovative, her thoughts are big and bright and she just jumps for them and does it. I think that her albums are a reflection of that, and it should be really celebrated in that way.”
Rowland added that she wasn’t just saying that because Bey is her “sister,” but because “it’s the truth. I’ve seen the blood, sweat and tears that she puts into these projects, and her thoughts and her heart and her passion and her soul.”
