Teyana Taylor was offered with the BET Awards 2026 Icon of the Yr award by the one and solely Janet Jackson. After taking in Jackson’s shock look and sobbing over Jackson’s uplifting phrases, Taylor accepted the award in shock.
“Oh, my God. Bitch, I’m gagging,” the multidisciplinary artist stated whereas accepting the glory. “They didn’t inform me Janet was coming, bitch, and it’s so loopy as a result of when Kehlani stated, ‘Janet is right here,’ I stated, ‘Bitch, is that the shock?’ I wasn’t positive!”
After thanking Jackson for “each textual content, each hug, each textual content” as an inspiration and buddy, Taylor delivered her speech. “Tonight, they handed me a title, and that title is Icon of the Yr. And for a little bit minute, I questioned if I used to be speculated to really feel uncomfortable saying that title out loud,” she stated. “However nah, I labored my ass off 20 years for this.
“So I’m not accepting what I’ve earned with conceitedness. I’m accepting what I’ve earned with gratitude, and this yr alone, I continued to provide the world the artist, actress, director, choreographer, inventive director, stylist, designer, author, producer, and chef. I graduate in September, y’all!”
Taylor and Jackson onstage
The Icon of the Yr award honors culturally influential artists whose inventive contributions have had a constructive impression on the leisure trade. The community introduced Taylor as its Icon of the Yr earlier within the month. The respect arrives throughout one of the vital expansive durations of Taylor’s profession. Making a reputation for herself within the mid-2000s as a dancer and choreographer, she shortly earned the eye of famend artists, together with Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Pharrell Williams. Over the next twenty years, Taylor constructed a résumé that has persistently prolonged previous conventional trade boundaries.
After dropping her debut album VII in 2014, Taylor went on to launch three extra studio albums, together with 2025’s Escape Room, which earned a Grammy nomination for Finest Rap Album earlier this yr.
Behind the digicam, she grew to become one of many trade’s distinctive visible storytellers, incomes BET Awards for Video Director of the Yr in each 2020 and 2023. Earlier than her starring function within the 2026 motion movie The Rip, Taylor acquired a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for her function as Perfidia Beverly Hills in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2025 movie One Battle After One other.
This yr, Taylor gained the BET Awards 2026 Vogue Vanguard Award, Video Director of the Yr, and Finest Actress award. See her full speech beneath.
