Host Trevor Noah takes aim at Nicki Minaj, goes easy on Kendrick Lamar at Grammys

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Trevor Noah once again roamed through the audience during his monologue to open the Grammy Awards, taking pokes at the stars while standing right next to them, but he saved his most pointed joke for someone who was absent.

“ Nicki Minaj is not here,” Noah said, to big cheers from the audience at Crypto.com Arena. “She is still at the White House with Donald Trump discussing very important issues.”

Minaj this week visited and praised the president, the culmination of a move toward MAGA that she's made in recent months.

Noah broke into a Trump impression. “Actually Nicki, I have the biggest ass, everybody’s saying it Nicki.”

In his sixth time hosting the show — and what he says will be his last — Noah mostly played it safe, not delving into much politics or controversy. There was no mention of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (on a night when many attendees were wearing “ICE OUT” buttons), or Greenland, or the Epstein files, at least not directly.

He packed much of the politics into one joke, when he said Lauryn Hill was performing on the show for the first time since 1999.

“Do you understand how long ago that is?” he said. “Back in 1999, the president had had a sex scandal, people thought computers were about to destroy the world, and Diddy was arrested.”

He wandered to a table where Teddy Swims and Jelly Roll, both with well-tattooed faces, were sitting together, and suggested they try to use face ID to unlock each other's phones.

Standing next to Olivia Dean, he praised her for fighting Ticketmaster. She won partial refunds for her fans last year after criticizing the ticket resale business for being exploitative.

“Because if the fans can’t afford tickets, we can’t have live music,” Noah said, “and without concerts, how would we find out which CEOs are having affairs on the Jumbotron?”

Later in the show, Noah cozied up to the night's biggest nominee, Kendrick Lamar, and only congratulated him.

“I actually thought about writing a few jokes roasting you, but then I remembered what you can do to light-skinned dudes from other countries,” Noah, who is from South Africa, said in a reference to Lamar's beef with the Canadian rapper Drake that culminated in last year's big Grammy winner “Not Like Us.”

“Hip-hop beef has gone to a new level,” he said. “Rappers are doing full-on detective work on your life.” He added, “It was so much simpler when all you had to worry about was being shot.”

Later, he sat with Bad Bunny, and asked if he could come live with him in his native Puerto Rico if things got too bad in the U.S.

“Trevor I have some news for you,” Bad Bunny said. “Puerto Rico is part of America.”

The Recording Academy announced less than three weeks ago that Noah was returning “one final time.”

“I believe in term limits,” Noah said during the show.

Only singer Andy Williams, who hosted the Grammys seven times in the 1970s, has hosted more often.

Noah himself is a four-time Grammy nominee, and was up this year in the best audio book recording category for “Into The Uncut Grass,” a children's story. He lost to the Dalai Lama.

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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Nicki Minaj in several places.

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