Teyana Taylor was having a completely normal day doing her skincare routine when everything changed.
The singer and actress revealed to PEOPLE at Elle’s Women in Hollywood event on November 17 that she learned about her Grammy nomination with a face mask drying on her skin. In the Instagram video she posted on November 11, she is shown frozen in place as she tries not to crack the mask. “I got a mask on so I can’t move my face,” she says after hearing that her 2025 album Escape Room is nominated for Best R and B Album. The category places her alongside GIVĒON, Coco Jones, Ledisi, and Leon Thomas.
In the clip, Teyana eventually lets her excitement break through. She jumps up and down on the couch, FaceTimes her family, and joins them in prayer. “I was so excited but also so excited for the wonders that that face mask was doing, you know what I’m saying?” she joked. But once her grandmother began praying, Teyana says the emotion took over completely. “My Nana started praying, and literally I cried my whole mask off. It was so amazing, so beautiful, the best way to find out.”
On Instagram, she opened up even more. Teyana reflected on how meaningful the timing felt. “Nearly twenty years ago on November 7th I signed my very first record deal,” she wrote. “And on November 7th, 2025 … God said ‘remember when I told you the weight slash wait wasn’t punishment? I told you it was preparation for what I already had written for you?? Baby girl, it’s your time.’”
She described her twenty year journey as a mix of “highs, heartbreaks, reinvention, revelation, rooms I prayed to enter, rooms I had to walk away from, and rooms I had to build myself.” Receiving her first Grammy nomination after all that, she said, filled her with overwhelming gratitude. “To be seen this way.”
