Last night (February 2) was the Recording Academy Honors Presented by the Black Music Collective event at Hollywood Palladium in LA as part of the GRAMMys week festivities.
At the event, Lil Wayne and Missy Elliott were presented with the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award where Drake honored Wayne with a video message. After starting with the joke “Good evening, Grammys. Well, I haven’t gotten to say that since 2016,” he paid a tribute to his mentor Weezy.
As we know, Drake hasn’t been good with the GRAMMYs for several years now so the above opening line makes sense.
Honoring Wayne, Drizzy said, “Lil Wayne… I love you so much. I know I probably get annoying with saying how much you mean to me and my family, but I think I speak on behalf of everybody when I say that our careers, our cadences, our melodies, maybe our face tats or our outfits or our decisions in general would not have been the same without your natural gift to just be yourself.” Watch the clip below.
During his heartfelt speech, Weezy spoke on where he comes from and thanked the mother of his children. “I want you all to know that I don’t get honored. Where I’m from, New Orleans, you’re not supposed to do this. I walked into my mama’s room when I was 14. She asked me for a kid because my dad was killed. And her son had just blown up and went on his first tour. When I came home she said, ‘Son, I can’t live in this house by myself. We’re going to have to figure something out.’ “I’d like to thank Antonia Johnson [his first child’s mother] for reasoning with me and my mom, and my life. I’d like to thank every single one of my kids and every single one of their mothers.”