Beyoncé dedicated Monday night’s On the Run II show in Detroit to the Queen of Soul. “We love you,” Beyoncé said of Aretha Franklin, according to the Detroit Free Press. Bey thanked the icon for “the beautiful music.” The dedication came after the couple’s opening song, Jay-Z’s “Holy Grail.” Franklin is reportedly receiving hospice care, and is seriously ill.
Beyoncé and Franklin went through a tiff after the 2008 Grammy Awards, when Bey introduced Tina Turner as “the queen,” and only mentioned Franklin in passing. (“I am not sure of whose toes I may have stepped on or whose ego I may have bruised between the Grammy writers and Beyoncé,” Franklin said at the time. “However, I dismissed it as a cheap shot for controversy.”) But in 2013, after Beyoncé was criticized for lip-syncing at President Obama’s inauguration, Franklin came to her defense: “When I heard [she lip-synced] I just really cracked up. I thought it was really funny, but she did a beautiful job with the pre-record.”