Beyoncé and Jay-Z dedicated their most recent show to Aretha Franklin on Monday night, following reports the soul legend is “gravely ill”.
On Sunday night, veteran reporter Roger Friedman claimed in his column that Aretha’s family was asking her fans for prayers, while they remain at her bedside at a hospital in Detroit.
At the latest stop on their ‘On The Run II’ tour in Detroit, Beyoncé took a moment at the beginning of the show to dedicate the concert to Aretha.
“We love you,” she said of Aretha, near the start of her performance. “And thank you for all the beautiful music.”
Beyoncé has repeatedly named the ‘Say A Little Prayer’ singer as one of her biggest inspirations, most recently in the feature that accompanied her Vogue September issue photo-shoot.
She said: “Imagine if someone hadn’t given a chance to the brilliant women who came before me: Josephine Baker, Nina Simone, Eartha Kitt, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, and the list goes on.
“They opened the doors for me, and I pray that I’m doing all I can to open doors for the next generation of talents.”
The admiration is clearly mutual, as on her 2014 covers album ‘Aretha Franklin Sings The Great Diva Classics’, the singer covered Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ in a mash-up with the Destiny’s Child hit ‘Survivor’.
“She’s a hard worker, that’s what I really like about her,” Aretha told Meredith Vieira of Beyoncé in 2015. “You can see it in her presentation that she has put some time and energy into it, and she’s got plenty of [energy].”