Nas will receive the BMI Icon Award at the 2026 BMI R&B/Hip-Hop Awards, BMI announced on Wednesday, July 29 Music Business Worldwide.

The ceremony takes place on August 26 in Los Angeles. It is a private event, closed to the public. BMI — Broadcast Music, Inc., one of the major performance-rights organisations in the United States that collects royalties for songwriters and publishers — will host the evening through CEO Mike O'Neill, EVP and Chief Revenue & Creative Officer Mike Steinberg, and VP, Creative, Atlanta Catherine Brewton.

The awards will honour the songwriters, producers, and publishers behind the past year's 35 most-performed R&B and hip-hop songs, drawn from BMI's catalogue of more than 25 million works. The Icon Award sits apart from those performance honours as a career recognition.

Past recipients of the BMI Icon Award in the R&B/hip-hop category include James Brown, Al Green, Isaac Hayes, Janet Jackson, Patti LaBelle, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Lil Wayne, and Babyface. Lil Wayne received the honour in 2023; Babyface followed in 2024. Last year's ceremony was skipped in the sequence — the 2026 edition picks the award back up.

BMI presents Icon Awards at several genre-specific ceremonies, not only the R&B/Hip-Hop Awards. At the BMI Pop Awards, held on May 12 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, Paul Anka received the 2026 BMI Icon honour Billboard. The BMI Film, TV & Visual Media Awards round out the set.

What gives the Icon Award its weight is the company it places an artist in. The list of past recipients spans founding figures of soul and funk alongside the rappers who reshaped the genre from the 1990s onward. Adding Nas to that roster places a three-decade recording career next to names like James Brown and Janet Jackson.

Nas, born Nasir Jones, released his debut album Illmatic in 1994 and has since built a catalogue that stretches across eras of hip-hop without leaving the genre behind. His later career has been notably prolific — a run of albums produced with Hit-Boy between 2020 and 2023 — keeping him active on release schedules well into his third decade as a recording artist.

For songwriters and publishers in BMI's R&B/hip-hop repertoire, the August 26 ceremony doubles as a royalty-adjacent spotlight: the 35 most-performed songs of the year are the ones generating the most public performance income, which is the revenue collected when music is played on radio, streaming services, television, and in public venues.

The Icon Award itself carries no monetary prize. What it carries is institutional recognition from the organisation that tracks and pays out those performance royalties — a body with direct, daily working relationships with the songwriters it serves.