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.
