Frank Ocean, Miguel Get Shining Endorsements From Grammy Vet Alicia Keys

Over the span of her career, Alicia Keys has earned the title of Grammy Awards Queen. She's taken home a whopping 14 trophies, but her reprieve from this year's show means that she'll get the chance to watch her pals try to take home Grammy gold come February.

One of those pals is Girl on Fire songwriter, Frank Ocean, who is up for a whopping six awards off the power of his debut album Channel Orange. Those accolades, Keys tells MTV News, are well-deserved. "I'm so happy! I'm gonna tell him today cause I was in these rehearsals all day so they kind of came out, what last night or something, so by the time today I figured out kind of everything that was going on," she said Thursday night on the red carpet of her annual Black Ball in New York City.

In fact, she couldn't say enough for her "One Thing" collaborator, Ocean. She added, "I'm so excited for Frank. I think he's a really, really, really special artist for real. And I'm so glad that people are recognizing that. I think this is going to be a really cool Grammy year."

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But, he wasn't the only guy she wanted to send Grammy love to. "I'm gonna reach out to a couple people. I'm gonna reach out to Miguel," she also shared. (The "Adorn" singer is up for five awards himself). "I think that he's awesome."

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Keys wasn't just celebrating her friends' achievements at the Black Ball. She was also at the Apollo Theater to raise funds for her Keep a Child Alive charity. It worked as she reportedly raised $1.3 million after having to reschedule the event last month due hurricane Sandy.

"Well, because the Black Ball got pushed back from November 1... it changed everything. There's absolutely nothing that's the same as the original program, but that is fine. I think that it became even better because it's more spirited and it made us have a certain gratitude because so many people were displaced. ... So it made this even more important to make this work."