With every award show, it’s inevitable that unsuccessful nominees and their supporters will end the night feeling defeated. A total of 94 different categories were presented at the sixty-sixth annual Grammys on Feb. 4, 2024.
Before the award ceremony had ended, outraged viewers at home flooded the comment sections of Grammys related posts across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and X, previously referred to as Twitter. Among these comments, there was a specific award result that garnered prominent attention and viewer disapproval, the awarding of the Rap Album of the Year.
Of the nominees, fans viewed artists like Drake, Metro Boomin and Travis Scott as the ‘real competition,’ given that all three artists were nominated for record breaking albums. One can only imagine the upset that ensued after nominee Killer Mike was awarded for his album MICHAEL, because who is Killer Mike? The exclusive voting privileges of the Recording Academy for the Grammys should no longer be in place, instead viewers at home should be responsible for voting, as they properly represent the majority opinion.
Grammys results are voted upon and decided by a committee, not the viewers at home who make up the majority of the streams of the music nominated at the event. The committee, known as the Recording Academy, has 21,000 members. Each of the Recording Academy’s members are involved in a range of professions in the musical field, but only 12,000 of the members are eligible to vote for the Grammys.
Voting eligibility is determined by several factors, including two strong recommendations from music industry peers and technical credits on at least six released tracks. These requirements are taken into consideration when selecting members to maintain credibility in the Recording Academy but it’s evident that credibility can still begin to crumble despite enforcing qualifications.
In ‘Can the Grammys Be Trusted,’ published by The New York Times, writer Jon Caramanica questions the credibility of the Recording Academy in 2020, in which he addresses the “malfeasance and rot” in the Recording Academy, discovered by Deborah Dugan when she became the chief executive. Caramanica describes the myriad of problems within the Recording Academy, including voting irregularities, conflicts of interest among the board and prior hefty payments to lawyers.
Despite the requirements in place to ensure credibility, it’s apparent that corruption is still inevitable and credibility can never be guaranteed. Along with this, Caramanica highlights that the Recording Academy had no intention of changing it’s problematic practices, as Dugan was placed on leave 10 days before the sixty-second Grammys after being accused of bullying by an administrative assistant. The Recording Academy recognized that their questionable operations were in jeopardy and actively prevented the stripping of them, further abusing their power to their advantage.
In August of 2023, artist Travis Scott held a concert in Rome, Italy for the release of his album UTOPIA. In an article for The New York Times, Elisabetta Povoledo emphasized locals’ descriptions of vibrations in the ground and panic that an earthquake was underway. In reality, the earthquake with a magnitude of 1.3 was caused by the jumping of the 60,000 fans attending the concert.
UTOPIA was among the five albums nominated for Rap Album of the Year at the sixty-sixth Grammys. Regardless of earthquakes and the album being named the most-streamed record on release day of 2023, with 128 million streams according to Brain Kennedy for Music Daily, Scott still fell short to Killer Mike.
The collaborative album Her Loss by rappers Drake and 21 Savage was nominated for the category as well. Writer Joyce Li describes in an article for Hypebeast that in 2022, Spotify announced that the album had surpassed one billion streams. According to Spotify, Killer Mike’s album MICHAEL, which received the award, currently stands at 41 million streams.
Killer Mike’s eligibility is unquestionable, being nominated for several awards at the sixty-sixth Grammys displays a great deal of talent and hard work. Although, it is evident that the Rap Album of the Year was not awarded to the majority’s opinion. A title like Rap Album of the Year is clearly subjective, as all of the nominated albums demonstrated qualities that could be considered the ‘best.’ If a title of such honor is awarded subjectively, it should be awarded according to the people’s opinions, rather than a committee that has displayed prior corruption and biases.
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