Hot on the heels of her success at the American Music Awards (AMA), Barbados’ pop princess Rihanna continues her reign with a whopping eight nominations for the 2017 Grammy Awards.
The impressive tally places her a heartbeat behind Beyonce, with nine nods, who Rihanna will face off against in the Record of the Year and Best Urban Contemporary Album categories as a solo artiste, as well as in the Best Rap/Sung Performance as featured artiste on Kanye West’s Famous.
Rihanna is tied with West and ex-boyfriend Drake with eight nominations each and shares three of her nods with Drake – two for their duet on Rihanna’s Work and one for Rihanna as a featured artist on Drake’s Views.
Barbados’ superstar will face stiff competition in the Record of the Year category with Work up against classy contenders Adele (Hello), Lukas Graham (7 Years) and Twenty One Pilots (Stressed Out), in addition to Queen Bey’s Formation.
Record of the year recognizes the whole recording, including the artist and musicians’ performances alongside producers and engineers. Song of the year is given to the writers exclusively.
Other major nods for Rihanna include Best R&B Performance (Needed Me) and Best R&B Song (Kiss it Better).
In the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, Rihanna will go head-to-head with fellow Caribbean artiste Sean Paul of Jamaica. Rihanna’s Work, featuring Drake, will vie for the honour with Sia’s Sean Paul-featured Cheap Thrills.
Meanwhile, Beyonce’s nine nominations land her in the record books as the most-nominated female artist in Grammy award history.
Her nine nods include album, song and record of the year, the top three Grammy accolades, for her hit song Formation and visual album Lemonade.
The 35-year-old R&B singer has been nominated 62 times in Grammy history and has won 20 Grammy awards over her career spanning two decades.
Kanye West, who has eight nominations this year for his The Life of Pablo album, has notched 68 Grammy nominations over his career, and won 21 awards. The star cancelled the rest of his tour last month before being hospitalised for a reported “nervous breakdown.”
British singer Adele is also up for the top three awards with her hit ballad Hello and album 25 and has a total of five nominations. The singer previously swept all three top categories in 2012 with her 19 album.
If Adele wins the coveted best album Grammy, she will become only the second woman to receive the prize twice, after Taylor Swift.
Record sales have Adele firmly in the lead with 25 becoming the world’s best-selling album of 2015, selling 20 million copies as of June 2016.
Justin Bieber’s Purpose, Drake’s Views and country music singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson’s A Sailor’s Guide To Earth rounded out the contenders of album of the year.
The Grammy Awards are the top US music honours and each year members of the music industry choose nominees and winners across more than 80 categories.
Chance The Rapper landed seven nominations including the best new artist category, in which the 23-year-old Chicago native is up against pop duo The Chainsmokers, California rapper Anderson Paak and country music singers Kelsea Ballerini and Maren Morris.
David Bowie, who died in January two days after the release of his final album Blackstar, received four nominations including best alternative album.
Prince, who died in April, also landed one Grammy nomination for his final record, Hit n Run Phase Two, in the best engineered non-classical album category alongside Bowie’s Blackstar.
The 2017 Grammy Awards will take place on February 12 in a ceremony hosted by James Corden at Los Angeles’ Staples Center.