Beyoncé and Jay-Z Got Real Cheeky And Shouted Out Meghan Markle With Their BRITs Speech

When Beyoncé and Jay-Z start a band, they don’t half-arse things. They name the project after themselves/their iconic marriage, they release their first video clip as a surprise event filmed in the gotdang Louvre, and they have her turn into a better rapper than he is.

Then, when they win Best International Group at the BRIT awards (take that, Imagine Dragons) they do it in front of a portrait of Meghan Markle decked out in a big pile of jewels.

Shouting out the biracial, American-born Duchess of Sussex with this old-fashioned portrait is also self-referential another level: to the ‘Apeshit’ clip, where they filmed a variety of gorgeous black models arranged in luxurious tableaux around the Louvre, and themselves stood in front of the Mona Lisa, looking as outrageously rich as they are.

It was a subversive celebration of black excellence in one of the world’s most famous collections of monuments to Western civilisation, wealth, colonisation and privilege – and a middle finger to the people who don’t think hip hop is capital-A art.

Some of those same people might well be a bit bothered by Markle’s marriage to Prince Harry. The British media is certainly having a hard time.

And to them the Carters say: deal with it.