Kanye West Named ‘Artist of the Year’ at 2016 Webby Awards

Kanye West and Krysten Ritter are the recipients of this year’s special achievement awards at the 2016 Webby Awards. The ceremony will honor West and Ritter’s contributions to Internet culture.

West is this year’s Webby Artist of the Year, which recognizes the record-breaking release of his album The Life of Pablo through streaming media. After being streamed 250 million times via Tidal in its first 10 days, TLOP later became the first Number One album to top the Billboard 200 off of mostly streaming-equivalent albums.

Ritter, who is the Webby Best Actress, starred in the Netflix original series Marvel’s Jessica Jones, which became one of the most-watched series on the popular video streaming site. “Kanye West and Krysten Ritter are two standouts who have successfully leveraged the immense influence and addictive elements of streaming media to drive innovation on the Internet,” Webby Awards’ Executive Director David-Michel Davies said in a statement.

West and Ritter will attend the event at Cipriani Wall Street on May 16th. The full show will be available to stream on demand at the ceremony’s official site the following morning.

West was recently been sued by a California man for the rollout of his album. The lawsuit is a complaint that West and Tidal misled consumers by having them believe TLOP would be a Tidal-exclusive, though it popped up on other streaming services six weeks after its release. West had previously tweeted that his LP “will never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale…You can only get it on Tidal.”