NAACP Image Awards Sets Career Honors For New Edition & Frankie Beverly; Queen Latifah Returning As Host – Update

UPDATED, 9 AM: The NAACP Image Awards today revealed a pair of career honors for musical acts to be presented at its 55th annual ceremony on March 16.

New Edition will be inducted into the will be inducted into the acclaimed NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame, and R&B hitmaking Maze frontman Frankie Beverly is set for the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Featuring Ricky Bell, Bobby Brown, Johnny Gill, Ralph Tresvant, Michael Bivins and Ronnie DeVoe, New Edition broke out with “Cool It Now” and “Mr. Telephone Man” from their self-titled gold 1984 album. The group continued to rack up Top 10 R&B hits and re-stormed the pop charts with its multiplatinum 1996 reunion disc Home Again, which topped the Billboard 200 and produced the Top 10 singles “Hit Me Off” and “I’m Still in Love with You.” New Edition also was the subject of a popular BET miniseries The New Edition Story in 2017.

Beverly founded Raw Soul in 1970 before renaming the group Maze in 1976. The group had eight consecutive R&B Top 10 albums from 1977-93, most of which went gold including the ’80s chart-toppers Can’t Stop the Love and Silky Soul. It also had nine Top 10 singles on the Billboard R&B chart, including the No. 1 “Back in Stride” and “Can’t Get Over You.” The group also is known for the title track of its 1980 album Joy and Pain.

PREVIOUSLY, March 5: The Queen is coming back.

The NAACP said today that Grammy- and Emmy-winning The Equalizer star-producer Queen Latifah will return to host the 55th annual Image Awards, which will be handed out Saturday, March 16. BET and CBS are airing the show live at 8 p.m. ET and delayed at 8 p.m. PT.

Writer, poet and activist Amanda Gorman will receive the Chairman’s Award during the ceremony, an honor bestowed in recognition of individuals who demonstrate exemplary public service and use their distinct platforms to create agents of change. Creative director and costume designer June Ambrose is set for the NAACP’s Vanguard Award during the Image Awards Fashion Show on Friday, March 15

NAACP also will recognize winners in non-televised Image Awards categories from March 11-13 ahead of its Awards Dinner the following night.

Queen Latifah, who also hosted the 2023 Image Awards, was a 2023 Governors Award recipient and a career honoree at the 2021 BET Awards. She scored an Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role in 2002’s Best Picture winner Chicago and won an Emmy for for Outstanding TV Movie as a producer on Bessie, in which she also starred, winning a SAG Award for the title role. Along with toplining CBS’ rebooted The Equalizer since 2021, she won a Grammy in 1995 and has amassed a half-dozen other nominations from the Recording Academy.

Her recent projects also include Hustle, Maya and the Three, Girls Trip, Star, The Wiz Live! and Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip-Hop.

“The NAACP Image Awards is an important celebration for our community and industry every year, the group’s President and CEO Derrick Johnson said. “We get the opportunity to highlight the major accomplishments of artists, writers, entertainers, activists and other change makers that push Black excellence forward in a powerful way.”