On Sunday, February 4, while accepting the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award during the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, Jay-Z, a legendary rapper, called out The Recording Academy for the lack of recognition for Black artists. “Once exclusion was no longer an option, the inclusion of Black music has been curated, at least historically, very carefully, to absorb that music while minimizing black people,” said Jay-Z in his Grammy speech. “I’m just saying, we love y’all, we love ya’ll, we love y’all, and we want y’all to get it right. At least get it close to right.” He then brought his wife, Beyoncé, into the conversation. “I don’t want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than anyone and never won Album of The Year,” he said of Beyoncé. “Even by your own metric, that does not work,” CNN reported. To be more specific, Beyoncé became the most-awarded artist in Grammys history in 2023 after four big wins for her album “Renaissance.” However, many fans felt she was snubbed in the Album of The Year (AOTY) category for the highly acclaimed album. In fact, no Black woman has earned that award in the past 25 years since Lauryn Hill and “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” in 1999. Another shocking fact is only 11 Black artists have won AOTY in the 66-year history of the Grammy Awards; the time gap between the latest and the previous winners of this category was 14 years, from Herbie Hancock in 2008 to Jon Batiste in 2022, according to Business Insider.
It can be said that the Grammys awards are considered the most prestigious awards in the music industry, and The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) is responsible for determining the winners. However, until now, there have been no specific published criteria for the winners’ selection process; basically, members of the Grammy Academy Council are in charge and will vote on what they find impressive about the artist’s work, including chart performance, critical acclaim, or respect for pioneer artists. Hence, in order for an artist to be eligible to win a Grammy, they must first attract the attention of this committee. Moreover, it is worth noting that winning a Grammy is a significant achievement for artists in the music industry. While they can measure success with audiences through commercial figures and with critics through review scores, the Grammy Award is the highest form of artistry recognition among the artist’s community.
On the one hand, the issues with the Recording Academy’s awards stem from the voting committee and its procedures; that’s why it is pointless to criticize artists who have won awards for not deserving them, as there are no specific criteria for voting. The audiences and the artists themselves do not want to be involved in scandals like what happened in 2016 between Kanye West and Taylor Swift, which led to severe consequences for both parties. Winning a Grammy is simply an acknowledgment from industry insiders that an artist’s work is worthy of recognition, and sometimes, this recognition may not reach all those who deserve it. Once again, the nature of this evaluation committee is its biggest problem because it is inherently a conservative council. The majority of members in the Grammy Academy Council are predominantly white males, which has resulted in voting patterns that usually conflict with the audience’s prediction. According to Billboard, the Grammy Committee welcomes 2,400 people as part of the organization’s 2023 new member class, of which female voters make up only 37%, and nearly half of this is composed of Caucasians. Thus, it is not surprising that male artists tend to receive more Grammy nominations in various categories, including singers, rappers, and songwriters.
Grammy has faced criticism for personal bias in the industry and discrimination against minority groups for years. As a response to the accusations of racial bias, Grammy created a series of categories related to R&B and Hip Hop, which are genres dominated by black artists. While this move ensures a higher number of winners of color, it fails to address the underlying issue of systemic racism within the music industry where these genres are often associated with the black communities. This also helps explain why Beyoncé and Kanye West often win dozens of awards in these sub-categories since they only compete with lesser-known black artists rather than with white artists in the main category. Jay-Z is not the only one who raised his voice about this problem; Tyler, the Creator also questioned categories like this because it divides black artists like him from the main categories and Pop/Rock categories in the 2020 Grammy after taking home the award for Best Rap Album. “It sucks that whenever we — and I mean guys that look like me — do anything that’s genre-bending or that’s anything they always put it in a rap or urban category. I don’t like that ‘urban’ word — it’s just a politically correct way to say the n-word to me,” Tyler said during his acceptance speech. “When I hear that, I’m just like, why can’t we be in pop? Half of me feels like the rap nomination was just a backhanded compliment. Like, my little cousin wants to play the game. Let’s give him the unplugged controller so he can shut up and feel good about it — that’s what it felt like a bit.” One specific example of this issue is the Recording Academy’s failure to nominate The Weeknd and his widespread album “After Hours” at the 64th Grammy Awards. This was a major surprise for the public as “After Hours” and its single “Blinding Lights” became huge hits in 2020, setting numerous records and spending weeks in the top 10 of the U.S. music chart. And the reason for this? The Weeknd only submitted his nominations competing in the Pop categories instead of R&B, where people of color primarily dominate.
In conclusion, we acknowledge that the Grammy is still a prestigious and extremely valuable award for many artists, but at the same time, we must admit that there are several issues that need to be addressed and fixed in the awards. Hence, as audiences, we should avoid comparing artists to determine their worth because objective evaluation sometimes has to rely on personal opinion. The only thing we could do is we need to stop giving too much importance to the Grammys as the sole metric that reflects the quality of music, or at least create pressure on the awarding committee to change and create a more convincing awareness of its value for the music industry in the future.
References:
Lisa Respers, F (2024, February 5), Jay-Z calls out the Recording Academy in Grammys speech, cnn.com. CNN Entertainment. https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/04/entertainment/jay-z-academy-grammys-speech/index.html
Callie, A (2024, February 4), Only 11 Black artists have won album of the year at the Grammys — here they all are, businessinsider.com Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/black-grammys-winners-album-of-the-year
Paul Grein (2020, November 11), Recording Academy Has 1,345 New Voting Members—About 12% of Its Total, billboard.com Billboard
August Brown, (2018, Jan 25) More than 90% of recent Grammy nominees are men, USC study finds, latimes.com Los Angeles Times
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-pop-music-gender-20180124-story.html
Starr, B (2022, April 4), Tyler, the Creator Gives His Grammys Victory Speech While Hiking: ‘Let’s See What the F— Is Next’, billboard.com Billboard
