The 2022 Grammy Awards happened this past Sunday, April 3rd. There were joyous moments for many people in the music industry.
Silk Sonic went 4 for 4 with a clean sweep winning every award they were nominated for. Olivia Rodrigo took home Grammy’s for Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Album, and Best Pop Solo Performance, but lost Album of the Year to Jon Batiste, and both Song and Record of the Year to Silk Sonic.
Jon Batiste, the bandleader of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”, took album of the year for “We Are,” which had virtually no commercial impact but was supported strongly by the membership of the Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys. Batiste was up a total of 11 awards, more than any other artist, and won five.
But with all the celebration and joyous moments, Hip Hop/Rap was put on the back burner once again.
Pitchforks Alphonse Pierre explained hip hop’s place in the Grammys by saying, “Back in 1989, the Grammys acknowledged hip-hop for the first time with the Best Rap Performance category—but nominees including Will Smith, Salt-N-Pepa, and LL Cool J boycotted the show because the award wasn’t televised. Thirty-three years later, not much has changed.”
The announcement of Tyler, the Creator’s Best Rap Album win for Call Me If You Get Lost was relegated to the un-televised pre-show, as if it were meaningless. There will be excuses, like ‘the show needed more time for gratuitous shots of Anderson Paak’s wig’, and ‘they reportedly intended to broadcast the award but chose not to because Tyler apparently ditched the show to go on a hike’. The rapper ended up giving a speech, which would have been one of the best of the night, on Instagram.”
It’s just the latest example of the Grammys’ bumpy history with hip-hop, which this year also included Drake withdrawing his nominations and the Academy rescinding its offer to let Kanye perform due to his “concerning online behavior.” (Ye did win Best Rap Song, for “Jail,” but it was also not televised.) At least they aired the Best Rap Performance award, which went to Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar’s “Family Ties,” but the joke was on the Grammys again because Kendrick was nowhere to be found.”
Grant Rinder of GQ said in a Grammy’s recap that, hip hop was underrepresented. He went on to say, “The two Nas’—Lil and Escobar—were the only rap acts to perform throughout the entire three-and-a-half-hour show, which felt…strange…given hip-hop’s dominance in music culture. As great as it was to see Nasir Jones play a medley of his classics and new material, where were some of the more contemporary stars who have taken up the mantle from him? J. Cole—who has never had a particularly fruitful relationship with the Grammys, winning his first recently as a featured performer on 21 Savage’s 2019 hit “A Lot”—was busy hosting his own festival.
Drake withdrew his submissions, and with them, any chance of his appearance or involvement. Granted, Kanye was slated to perform until producers deemed that too much of a risk, considering his recent behavior. That didn’t stop him from winning two awards, for Best Rap Song and Best Rap Melodic Performance.
For years, The Grammys has put hip hop/rap at the back of the line. Even though the genre basically has controlled music culture and or society for the past few decades. The influence of hip hop and rap is everywhere. When you turn on your tv or open your phone to social media, i.e. TikTok, it’s hip hop culture you see. Hip Hop is the most popular music genre in America but I guess The Recording Academy doesn’t really care.
For the Grammys to televise just one hip-hop award presentation, in my mind, is disrespectful to the hip-hop culture as a whole. Also, the fact that Tyler, the Creator won best rap album and wasn’t nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys this year is mind-blowing.
Only 2 hip hop artists (Lauryn Hill & Outkast) have won Album of the Year since 1989, when hip hop was first acknowledged. I’m not saying that the hip-hop community should boycott the Grammys, but The Recording Academy should give Hip-Hop the respect it deserves for being trendsetters and heavy influencers on the Culture.
