As an avid music listener, the Grammys are my Superbowl. Throughout the year, I study the major music releases and place bets on who’ll secure Album of the Year. Almost always, I end up being wrong, and the deserving winner, in my opinion, walks away empty-handed (ex. 25 by Adele winning over Lemonade by Beyonce). However, blinded by love and curiosity, I am fixated in front of my television every winter for the award show, and this year was no different. My prediction for this year was for SZA to win Album of the Year (AOTY) for her record, SOS, due to its sprawling sonic range and fearless artistry. She didn’t win. Unfortunately, the Grammy’s, as an institution, are reticent with their process for awarding artists, and this results in many BIPOC artists getting “snubbed”, despite their success amongst listeners.
To be eligible to vote as a Recording Academy Member, and award Grammys, one must:
Aside from these qualifications, the specifics of who gets to vote for Grammys isn’t public information. However, it is understood that members, due to the format of their membership, often vote in genre categories “outside their expertise,” according to Vox. Requiring voters to cast critical opinions on genres they have little experience with becomes an issue when your voter makeup is 54% over the age of 40, and 50% non Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC). While music doesn’t correlate with race or age, the unique perspective of young listeners and BIPOC listeners is necessary to create a voting board more representative of real life. SZA, for example, is 34 years old, singing about her experiences being a young, Black, woman navigating adulthood. Having similarly young Black women, who may resonate with SZA more, on the Grammy voting board is essential to reaching a more objective opinion when analyzing music. Instead, today’s Recording Academy voting board is attempting to award music they don’t fully grasp. This unfamiliarity results in the funneling of Black artists in “secondary”, non-televised, and similarly unfamiliar genre-specific categories.
Beyoncé, one of the greatest artists of the 21st century, has 32 Grammys to date. However, not a single one is an award for Album of the Year. All her projects, including her most deserving self-titled, Lemonade, and Rennaissance, have been “relegated” to genre-specific categories. “Best R&B Album”, “Best Urban Contemporary Album”, the iterations are infinite—and the name “Urban Album” is famously dubbed by Tyler, The Creator as a politically correct way to say the n-word. However, the issue isn’t necessarily the existence of these categories, because like rap, country, and pop, excellent R&B music deserves to be awarded for its genre-specific merit. However, when BIPOC artists are snubbed in the most coveted categories of the evening, such as AOTY, the Recording Academy treats the genre categories as a consolation prize. Demoting BIPOC artists to sub-categories, full of music “for their people”, sends a message that their lives and experiences are lesser than others. Furthermore, the lack of representation amongst AOTY communicates that in the Grammy’s view, there is no value for Black voices in mainstream music.
When the Academy isn’t slighting Black artists, the alternative seems to be failing to nominate them in the first place. Artists like The Weeknd, and Nicki Minaj, have been consistently neglected by the award ceremony, and others, like Drake and Bruno Mars, have stated that they’re boycotting the Grammys altogether.
The significance of a SOS win would’ve signaled a shift in the Academy—that they are beginning to recognize the immeasurable contributions BIPOC artists make to music. SZA, not only deserved the award because of her remarkable year in music—her score of 90 on Metacritic, noteworthy 8.7 on Pitchfork, and a plethora of golden reviews from other publications ran circles around the other nominees. Additionally, SOS spent 10 weeks atop the Billboard 200, making SZA the first woman to do so since 2015. SZA entered awards season as the most critically adored nominee for Album of the Year, with immense commercial success. A SZA win would have been the first Black woman to win Album of the Year since 1999, and in-of-itself, would’ve represented a step towards a better music industry. And SZA was far from the only BIPOC artist snubbed this year and every year. Therefore, until the Grammy’s can feel the rhythm of Black excellence, Black artists must stop measuring their quality and merit on an unbalanced scale.
