Read from her golden card, here is Beyoncé’s acceptance speech for the 2017 Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album in its entirety.
Thank you so much. Hi, baby. Thank you to the Grammy voters for this incredible honor and thank you so everyone who worked so hard to beautifully capture the profundity of deep southern culture. I thank God for my family, my wonderful husband, my beautiful daughter, my fans for bringing me so much happiness and support.
We all experience pain and loss and often we become inaudible. My intention for the film and album was to create a body of work that will give a voice to our pain, our struggles, our darkness and our history, to confront issues that make us uncomfortable. It’s important to me to show images to my children that reflect their beauty so they can grow up in a world where they look in the mirror, first through their own families, as well as the news, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the White House, and the Grammys, and see themselves. [Applause] And have no doubt that they’re beautiful, intelligent, and capable.
This is something I want for every child of every race, and I feel it’s vital that we learn from the past and recognize our tendencies to repeat our mistakes. Thank you, again, for honoring Lemonade. Have a beautiful evening. Thank you for tonight. This is incredible.