Awards EXCLUSIVE: BTS 'Cannot Believe' They're Nominated at Billboard Music Awards -- Watch How Excited They Are! The 'Furious 8' star took the stage with Nicky Jam on Thursday. Directed by Mick Jackson. With Steve Martin, Victoria Tennant, Richard E. Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker. With the help of a talking freeway billboard, a wacky.

JAY- Z's '4: 4. 4' at the Grammys: Can He (Finally) Get an Album of the Year Nomination? Watch The Internship Youtube here. Even after its existence was announced a few weeks ago, JAY- Z’s 4: 4. Jay’s thirteenth studio album is his most personal work to date, a disarmingly vulnerable project with zero Top 4.

Ostensibly, 4: 4. JAY- Z’s marriage to Beyoncé. For a larger- than- life personality like JAY- Z — who, at 4. The king of chest- thumping get- money anthems, releasing an album full of apologies and admissions of imperfections?

No JAY- Z obsessive thought this day would come.“If you’re old enough, you remember a different JAY- Z, the JAY- Z who became king of New York through sheer sneering cold unemotional arrogant confidence,” Stereogum’s Tom Breihan wrote on Friday (June 3. He was enormous. He was larger- than- life. He was staring down at the rest of us from the Times Square heights — both figuratively and, since the Rocawear billboard had just gone up, literally. And now Jay has made himself smaller than life.

He’s shown us he’s just a man, and sort of a f- -- up at that.”With Jay going full- on mortal with 4: 4. Reviews are still rolling in following the album’s release on Thursday night, but the consensus is already that 4: 4. JAY- Z’s most thoughtful, eloquent and all- around best project in a long, long time. The Ringer’s Amanda Dobbins described 4: 4.

L. A. Times’ Mikael Wood wrote that 4: 4. Breihan wrote that the Tidal exclusive is “a brave, thoughtful, rewarding piece of work. We’re richer with it out in the world — or, at least, we are if we can figure out how to hear it.” At this point, 4: 4. JAY- Z his best reviews since 2. American Gangster, if not his 2.

The Black Album. And with that in mind, is it finally going to bestow one of the most celebrated rappers of all time with an album of the year nomination at the Grammy Awards? Watch King Arthur And The Knights Of The Round Table Online Fandango. You read that last sentence correctly: the owner of 2. Grammys has never had a full- length nominated for the top prize (although he has been nominated for the album of the year award three times, as a contributor to albums by Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar and his wife, respectively). He’s also never been part of a winning record of the year or song of the year, somehow — songs like Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love,” Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and his own “Empire State of Mind” lost the major categories in which they were included, meaning that JAY- Z has never strolled up onstage to collect any of the four major prizes at the Grammys. How to explain this? An anti- hip- hop bias at the Grammys, perhaps?

Nope: contemporaries like Outkast and Eminem have scored multiple album of the year nods, while Kanye West — Jay’s one- time protégé, who receives a not- so- subtle shot on 4: 4. The College Dropout. So why the lack of love toward one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially viable MCs ever? Technically, the Grammys have shown JAY- Z a ton of love — since his mainstream breakthrough Vol. Hard Knock Life was nominated in 1. Shawn Carter was not up for a trophy.

He has multiple best rap performance wins, and multiple smash hits nominated in the top song categories. As far as album of the year goes, however, Jay has not had a true contender in the category since The Black Album 1. As celebrated as albums like The Black Album and 2. The Blueprint were upon their releases, the past decade has seen JAY- Z release a pair of albums (2. The Blueprint 3 and 2. Magna Carta Holy Grail) that included top 1. Watch the Throne, his 2.

With '4:44' giving JAY-Z his best reviews in years, could the legendary rapper finally score an album of the year nomination at the Grammy Awards?

LP with West, is largely considered a classic now, but did not garner the type of acclaim six years ago that typically accompanies an album of the year nominee (its score on critical aggregator Metacritic is 7. Now that we’ve rehashed the past, let’s look forward. With three months to go before the 2. Grammys eligibility period ends, there are a handful of early contenders, including Kendrick Lamar, Lorde and Ed Sheeran. None of them check the Recording Academy’s boxes quite like JAY- Z does with 4: 4. He’s a household name with major selling power that just released a bold new project that’s being hailed as a return to form. Oh, and he’s been snubbed in the album category for decades.

And oh, his wife just lost album of the year, to an artist who agreed that Lemonade should have won. There’s a lot that could change over the next few months, and a ton of upcoming projects that could box 4: 4.

But the Grammys’ most famous prize is one hill JAY- Z has yet to climb, and 4: 4. Now he just has to pray that Adele doesn’t surprise- drop 2.