Does Blue Ivy Really Have A Grammy? Yep, Here's How She Got It
Blue Ivy Carter looked so grown up as she accompanied her father, Jay-Z, on stage as he accepted the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award at the 2024 Grammys. He started his speech by saying that he used to refer to his Grammy trophies as "sippy cups for Blue. But Blue's grown now ... and she has her own Grammys." He wasn't kidding; in 2021, she won a Grammy at age 9, making Blue Ivy the second-youngest ever Grammy winner.
Blue Ivy won for Best Music Video for "Brown Skin Girl," and she shares the award with Beyoncé. While the song was on the soundtrack album "The Lion King: The Gift" in 2019, the music video that won the Grammy was a part of Beyoncé's 2020 visual album "Black is King."
Blue Ivy's contribution to the song was three-fold. She has a co-writer credit, appears in the music video, and provides some of the vocals — notably starting the song by singing, "Brown skin girl / Skin just like pearls / Best thing in the world / I'd never change it for anybody else." Wizkid and SAINt JHN also join Blue Ivy and Beyoncé for vocals on the track.
Blue Ivy joined superstars and family for the Brown Skin Girl video
Blue Ivy Carter is joined in the "Brown Skin Girl" music video by her mother, Beyoncé, and others in her family — her little sister, Rumi Carter, and her grandmother, Tina Knowles-Lawson. We love to see the multi-generational celebration of love! Along with family, the video features stars like Naomi Campbell, Lupita Nyong'o, and Kelly Rowland.
The video was directed by Jenn Nkiru, who also helped direct Beyoncé and Jay-Z in 2018 for their iconic video "Apes***," which was shot at the Louvre in Paris. The song, and by extension its video, is all about celebrating dark-skinned women and, as Nkiru told Vogue in 2020, "indulging aspects of beauty that are not often indulged." When the video came out, Beyoncé told Good Morning America: "It was so important to me in 'Brown Skin Girl' that we represented all different shades of brown, and I wanted every character to be shot in a regal light. It was important that we're all in this together, and we all are celebrating each other."
Blue Ivy first performed the song live at an event in Dubai
Along with a Grammy, Blue Ivy Carter won a Soul Train award for best songwriting for "Brown Skin Girl," and she became the youngest winner of a VMA when the video won for Best Cinematography. The song also spurred a social media firestorm of people using #BrownSkinGirlChallenge to post pictures of people celebrating and loving the brown skin that they're in.
Blue Ivy's first live performance of "Brown Skin Girl" was with her mother at a private show at the Atlantis The Royal opening in Dubai in January 2023. It marked the first of many stage appearances by Blue Ivy that year; she went on to perform at more than 15 shows during Beyoncé's Renaissance tour. Fans could see how Blue Ivy's confidence grew as the tour went on, and they loved her for it.
While "Brown Skin Girl" got Blue Ivy her first Grammy, it wasn't her first time in one of Beyoncé's videos. She was also a part of the 2019 "Spirit" music video for "The Lion King." Our guess (and hope) is that we can expect to see her in even more Beyoncé projects in the coming years.