Here’s Becky G’s Full Women in Music Speech

Glenn Rowley
·3 min read
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Becky G was honored on Wednesday night (March 1) with the American Express Impact award at 2023 Billboard Women in Music.

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The bilingual crossover star also brought Latinidad flair to the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles during the show by performing a solo rendition of her Karol G collab “Mamiii” while flanked by a guitarist, percussionist and two backing vocalists. “Lo que no sirve, que no estorbe/ Te metiste autogol por torpe/ Te quedó grande este torque/ Ya no estoy pa que de mí te enamores, baby/ Sin visa ni pasaporte/ Mandé tu falso amor de vacaciones,” she sang in Spanish.

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The singer later got teary-eyed as she accepted this year’s Impact award from Dove Cameron. “Let’s talk about my friend Becky G,” the Vengeance actress said while introducing her pal. “Her music is incredible, spans multiple languages and keeps racking up the hits.”

From there, Cameron ran through Becky’s litany of recent accomplishments, including five career top 10s on the Hot Latin Songs chart, her first No. 1 on the Latin Pop Albums chart (thanks to her 2022 sophomore full-length Esquemas) and more than two billion U.S. streams (per Luminate), before touting the reasons Becky G is this year’s Impact honoree.

“A second-generation Mexican-American, Becky G has made it a point to represent her community and celebrate Latinidad culture and 200 percenters through her music, her beauty brand and her new production company, which will focus on storytelling [in] underrepresented communities,” Cameron explained, citing the singer’s work with underprivileged student in L.A., vocal support of Black Lives Matter and Dreamers and role as co-chair of Michelle Obama’s voter registration nonprofit When We All Vote.

Accepting her award, Becky marveled, “It’s wild because I’m receiving this award that’s called the Impact Award, but it’s just as impactful on me in my life and my career and it’s for so many reasons. But especially because 15-year-old me once made a cover of a song called ‘Becky from the Block,’ and in that cover I made an oath to my community, to my family, to my younger self, that maybe the promise wasn’t that I wouldn’t leave where I came from but that I would take where I came from wherever I go. And it never fails.

“Every single time I land at LAX Airport, and I can see my abuelitos’ (grandparents’) houses from the little windows of the plane, I am reminded that that is ours,” she continued. “Where we come from will always be in our hearts, but where we go, that is up to us. And, as a 200 percenter, as a Chicana, a proud Mexican-American, as someone who prides herself in loving in two languages and speaking in two languages and working in two languages, representing two flags, I want to say this to other 200 percenters: It may be a lonely road to pursue things that we were never taught, some of our own might even make us feel bad for wanting more, and our own minds might even tell us that we have no place of belonging because we’ve been told que no somos ni de aquí ni de allá (that we are neither from here, nor from there.) But I know firsthand que sí vale la pena (that it is worth it to) push through it, I promise you it is so worth it, because without fear there is no courage, and with that same courage we can make impact.”

Watch Becky G accept the 2023 Women in Music Impact award below.

Additional reporting by Sigal Ratner-Arias.

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