Kendrick Lamar and SZA's 'Luther' wins Grammy for record of the year

Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “Luther” was named grounds of the twelvemonth astatine Sunday night’s 68th Grammy Awards, giving Lamar his 2nd consecutive triumph successful the class aft helium took it successful 2025 with his smash-hit Drake diss, “Not Like Us.”

The Compton-born rapper is 1 of lone 4 acts successful Grammy past who’ve gone backmost to backmost successful grounds of the year, on with Billie Eilish, U2 and Roberta Flack.

Built connected a salient illustration of Luther Vandross and Cheryl Lynn’s 1982 duet “If This World Were Mine” (itself a screen of the opus Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell introduced successful 1967), “Luther” is from Lamar’s sixth workplace album, “GNX,” which came retired successful November 2024.

“Luther forever. Cheryl, convey you truthful much,” Lamar said closing retired his acceptance speech. Cher announced the victor aft accepting a Lifetime accomplishment award, astatine archetypal conscionable speechmaking disconnected Vandross’ name. She appeared to not cognize wherever to find the sanction of the victor but caught connected to the information that the opus samples Vandross.

“Luther Vandross,” Lamar said, laughing with others connected signifier and the crowd, “is 1 of my favourite artists of each time. They granted america the privilege to bash our mentation of it. When we got that clearance, I committedness you we damn adjacent each dropped a teardrop due to the fact that we cognize however overmuch him and Cheryl Lynn poured into that grounds and being capable to enactment our vocals successful it, it proves we were somewhat worthy to beryllium conscionable arsenic large arsenic them individuals.” The lone drawback was they couldn’t curse, helium added smiling.

The opus — which was produced by Jack Antonoff, Bridgeway, M-Tech, Roselilah, Sounwave and Kamasi Washington — spent 13 weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100, longer than immoderate different azygous successful 2025. On Spotify, “Luther” has been streamed much than 1.3 cardinal times.

For her part, SZA asked the assemblage to not autumn into despair.

“I cognize that close present is simply a scary time. I cognize the algorithms archer america that it’s truthful scary and each is lost. There’s been satellite wars and there’s been plagues and we person gone on. We tin spell on. We request each other,” SZA said. “We’re not governed by the government. We’re governed by God.”

“Luther” besides won melodic rap performance. Other Grammy wins for Lamar see medium of the twelvemonth for “GNX,” rap opus for “TV Off” and rap show for “Chains & Whips” by Clipse, Pusha T and Malice featuring Lamar and Pharrell Williams.

The different songs nominated for grounds of the twelvemonth were Bad Bunny’s “DtMF,” Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild,” Doechii’s “Anxiety,” Billie Eilish’s “Wildflower,” Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra,” Chappell Roan’s “The Subway” and “Apt.” by Rosé and Bruno Mars.

— Jessica Gelt and Brittany Levine Beckman contributed to this report