{"id":243451,"date":"2026-05-26T02:00:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T02:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/243451\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T02:00:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T02:00:33","slug":"queen-latifah-as-2026-amas-host-hypes-up-vegas-crowd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/243451\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen Latifah as 2026 AMAs Host Hypes Up Vegas Crowd"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tQueen Latifah<\/a> held court at the MGM Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Monday night as the host of the 2026 American Music Awards<\/a>. Donning a white, feathery ensemble, the \u201cU.N.I.T.Y.\u201d rapper-actress, who will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame later this year, kicked off the show by introducing a pre-taped BTS performance from the K-pop group\u2019s concert the night before.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe BTS boys \u2014 Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V and Jung Kook \u2014 rocked all black leather as they did a live version of \u201cHooligan\u201d flanked by a flock of ninjas and pyrotechnics.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoments later, Latifah returned to the stage dressed in head-to-toe red and tapped into her MC skills with, \u201cThe energy is crazy in here! Make some noise!\u201d She went on to highlight several of her career milestones, including her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She also encouraged the audience to donate to several military organizations in support of Memorial Day.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom there, she pointed out nominees like Riley Green, sombr and Billy Idol, who is set to receive the lifetime achievement award later in the evening. Later Latifah returned, from the audience, where she spotted Goo Goo Dolls\u2019 frontman John Reznick and the two briefly duetted to the group\u2019s hit \u201cIris,\u201d nominated for best throwback song this year, as the audience joined in.<\/p>\n

\n\tTaylor Swift leads with eight nominations, with Morgan Wallen, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Dean and sombr following closely behind with seven nominations each.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe American Music Awards<\/a> were created by Dick Clark Productions. DCP is owned by Penske Media Corporation, The Hollywood Reporter\u2018s parent company, in a subsidiary joint venture between Penske Media and Eldridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queen Latifah held court at the MGM Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Monday night as the host…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[75394,95103,75326,2470,2538,9,24,63,34055,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-243451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-amas","tag-amas-2026","tag-american-music-awards","tag-awards","tag-music","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queen-latifah","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}