Beyoncé Giselle Knowles

Knowles' fourth studio album 4 was released on June 24, 2011. The album was inspired by several musicians, including Fela Kuti, The Stylistics, Lauryn Hill, Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 310,000 copies. This gave Knowles her fourth consecutive number one album in the US, and makes her the second female artist and third artist overall, to have her first four studio albums debut atop the Billboard 200. However, 4's first-week sales served as Knowles' lowest sales start with a studio album to date. Its lead single "Run the World (Girls)" peaked at number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100, and became Knowles' lowest charting lead single as a solo artist. The album's second single "Best Thing I Never Had" was released on June 1, 2011. It peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100. Knowles headlined at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival, performing a 90-minute set on the last day of the festival on June 26, 2011. She also performed at the T in the Park Festival in Scotland on July 9, 2011 and the Oxegen Festival in Ireland the next day. Knowles took the stage at New York's Roseland Ballroom for four nights of special performances. The set on each night of the 4 Intimate Nights with Beyoncé concerts was the entire collection of 4. For these four special nights, August 14, 16, 18 and 19, she performed her new songs to a standing room only audience.
On August 28, 2011 at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Knowles announced that she and Jay-Z were expecting their first child. She made the announcement during her red carpet appearance and again at the end of her performance of "Love on Top" by rubbing her growing stomach. The Huffington Post later confirmed that Knowles was 5 months pregnant and her pregnancy announcement had broken the "most tweets per second recorded for a single event" Twitter record, receiving 8,868 tweets per second. MTV reported that Knowles' performance of "Love on Top" and the announcement of her pregnancy at the awards ceremony helped the 2011's MTV Video Music Awards become the most-watched broadcast in MTV history, pulling in 12.4 million viewers. In addition, data from Google Insights showed that the most searched for term from August 29, 2011 to September 4, 2011 was "Beyonce pregnant" which reached 'breakout' levels – a term used by Google to describe a search with an increase of over 5,000 percent. Knowles' announcement of her pregnancy resulted in an increase in sales of her records, particularly 4, which had sold around 700,000 copies by August 2011. The album was certified platinum by the RIAA. 4 has sold 1,135,700 copies in the United States and 2,100,000 copies worldwide.
On October 8, a pre-taped performance of Knowles performing Michael Jackson's "I Wanna Be Where You Are" was shown at the Michael Forever tribute concert at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. In November 2011, Knowles was named the Highest Paid Performer Per Minute in the world by social media website Saucytime.com, earning £1.25 million for a five-song performance at a private New Year's Eve 2010 party on the island of St. Barts, equating to £71,040 for each minute she was on the stage. On November 30, 2011, Knowles received two nominations for the 54th Grammy Awards; Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for "Party", and Best Long Form Music Video for I Am... World Tour. In December 2011, Knowles was placed fourth on Forbes magazine's 2011 list of the "Top-Earning Women In Music" for earning $35 million.
On January 7, 2012, Knowles gave birth to a daughter, named Blue Ivy Carter, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. On January 9, 2012, Jay-Z released "Glory", a song dedicated to their child, on his social website LifeandTimes.com. The song detailed the couple's pregnancy struggles, including a miscarriage Knowles suffered before becoming pregnant with their daughter. Because Carter's cries were included at the end of the song and she was officially credited on the song as "B.I.C", at 2 days old she became the youngest person ever to appear on a Billboard chart when "Glory" debuted on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at number 74. On February 16, 2012, it was confirmed by Ryan Tedder that Knowles had already begun work on two new albums, saying "The conversations about her next album literally just started and there are two projects happening." She is also working with The-Dream to record new music. On March 19, 2012, it was announced that Knowles would be performing at her first post-baby concerts at the Memorial Day Weekend premiere of the Revel Hotel Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She will take the stage at the resort's Ovation Hall for three nights: May 25, 26 and 27.