The Grammy Awards have long joined their prestigious award show counterpart, the Oscars, in carrying enduring allegations of systemic racism playing a role in their nomination and voting process. Every year's nominations bring the inevitable talk of artists being snubbed, namely artists of colour, despite their music achieving immense popularity and being well-received by critics.
The 2021 Grammy Awards are no different and in fact, saw these conversations elevated after the monumental Black Lives Matter protests that occurred during the summer of 2020. The protests further brought to light the deep-rooted systemic racism within the institutions that make up our society, including art and culture.
For the 2021 Grammy Awards, only two of the eight albums nominated for Album of the Year, one of the most prestigious awards of the Grammys, were created by artists of colour. Only one of those nominated albums, Black Pumas by Black Pumas, was made by a Black artist. Since the conception of the Grammy Awards in 1957, only ten Black artists have won the Album of the Year award. These artists are Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Quincy Jones, Natalie Cole, Whitney Houston, Lauryn Hill, Outkast, Ray Charles, and Herbie Hancock. It is not uncommon for most BIPOC artists to have their music grouped in the same minor categories that are often associated with being “urban” year after year, while white artists take home the major awards.
This issue of BIPOC artists often being shortchanged in the most prestigious awards of the ceremony is one that has endured for years. During the 2017 Grammys, Adele’s 25 won the Album of the Year award rather than the anticipated win of Beyoncé for her largely acclaimed album, Lemonade. While Beyoncé was nominated for nine awards at the Grammys that year, she only won two – Best Urban Contemporary Album and Best Music Video.
At the 2020 Grammys, Black artist, Tyler the Creator said that his Best Rap Album win felt like a “backhanded compliment.”
As reported by The Independent, Tyler, the Creator said, “On one side, I’m very grateful that what I make can be acknowledged in a world like this, but also it sucks that whenever we – and I mean guys that look like me – do anything that’s genre-bending, they always put it in the rap or urban category,”
Music scholar, John Vilanova also wrote about the systemic racism within the Grammys and the music industry itself. He discussed how it resulted in white artist Taylor Swift’s 2016 Album of the Year win for the album 1989 over Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly which received a 96 Metacritic rating and was acclaimed by both critics and listeners. While Lamar won five awards, all within the Rap category, white artists such as Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran took home the prestigious mainstream awards.
“Reviewed on its own merits, Lamar’s work was seen as exceptional, but when it went up against a white artist, Swift, his work was no longer superlative. Now it was somehow inferior. He had the Best Rap Album; she had the Best Album. He had the best Rap Song and the Best Rap/Sung Collaboration; Ed Sheeran had the Song of the Year,” Vilanova said in the article.
The Weeknd’s new album, After Hours, received an abundance of raving reviews from critics and has been named the top R&B album of 2020. His single, “Blinding Lights,” which was released in December 2019, remained in the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 40 weeks, until the end of 2020. It was also the first song to spend a full year on Spotify's top 10 Global chart, speaking to both the song and the album’s immense popularity and critical acclaim it has received. Despite this, The Weeknd did not receive a single Grammy nomination for the 2021 Grammy Awards.
“The Grammys remain corrupt. You owe me, my fans and the industry transparency…” The Weeknd said in a tweet after the Grammy nominations were announced in late November.
Halsey also commented on the allegedly corrupt process behind the nomination process of the Grammys after not receiving any nominations for her album, Manic. As reported by Elite Daily, the singer said via Instagram stories, “The Grammys are an elusive process. It can often be about behind the scenes private performances, knowing the right people, campaigning through the grapevine, with the right handshakes and “bribes” that can be just ambiguous enough to pass as “not bribes,” she said on Instagram, adding that The Weeknd “deserves better.”
Though the official Grammy Awards website boasts a democratic voting process involving members of the Recording Academy, which consists of various musicians, artists, producers and other industry professionals, there have been controversies in the past regarding voter corruption in the review committees that ultimately vote on Grammy nominations. In a Rolling Stones article, former Recording Academy CEO, Deborah Dugan, accused review committee members of voting for artists based on personal or professional bias, whether subconscious or not. Dugan also alleged that there was an extreme lack of diversity within these committees, with a majority of members being older white men, resulting in a “toxic boys’ club environment.”
There have been many calls to ensure a more transparent and inclusive voting process for the selection of Grammy nominations. After a task force was introduced in 2018 to investigate the lack of diversity and inclusion within the Recording Academy, last September, the Recording Academy launched the Black Music Collective. The Collective will be a group consisting of prominent Black music creators and industry professionals with the goal of amplifying Black voices in the music industry and within the Recording Academy.
Prestigious awards shows for artists were founded on racist systems that have overlooked artists of colour for decades. This remains a prominent issue that is not only limited to the Grammy Awards. While the Black Music Collective is definitely a step in the right direction, it is unfortunate to see a solution arrive decades too late. As long as the fundamental processes behind the selection and nomination of artists for these awards remain unchanged, artists of colour will continue to be dismissed despite their continuous and immense contribution to culture.
Shaki Sutharsan (she/her) is a nineteen-year-old, Tamil, Canadian writer based in Toronto, Ontario. She is an Editor for the Kiwi Collective and contributes to her blog, Kutti Corner. Currently, she attends Ryerson University where she is studying Journalism.