When the 2012 Grammy nominees were announced in November, most in-the-know music fans agreed that the Academy seriously snubbed Kanye West’s acclaimed My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by leaving it out of the album of the year category. The oversight speaks to the often schizophrenic and complicated relationship between the hip-hop community and NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences), which oversees the Grammys.
On the one hand, non-hip-hoppers don’t see what the fuss is all about, and might consider West’s snub a non-troversy. But with a rap Grammy category not established until 1989 (a decade after it had become an artistic force), to it taking another decade for a rap album to grab the top prize (Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill received album of the year in 1999), the rap community has viewed the Grammys as having more baggage than Prada.
The real story here might not actually have to do with Ye, but rather with healing old wounds. How can NARAS effectively remedy beefs with the rap community that go so (Mobb) deep? Can the Grammys ever go gangsta?
Certainly, when the genre’s leading lights—from Eminem rhyming on “The Real Slim Shady” in 2000 that “you think I give a damn about a Grammy,” a year after Jay-Z boycotted the awards in 1999—it put the spotlight squarely on this chronic miscommunication on both sides. Most recently, the insertion of the Lonely Island (!) into the best rap/sung rap category in 2009, and last year’s exclusion of Gang Starr’s Guru in the R.I.P. montage, turned it into an award show that some avoid like a Tony Yayo mixtape. My street alias is Daltpak Chopra, so, like, where do we go from here? It’s simple. Here are my recommendations:
1) Hip-hop is about more than just Eminem. The dude has like 13 awards. Spread the love. The award is about music, not sales. Nas has no Grammys. Is there something wrong with this picture?
2) Rap’s raison d’être is to call out the purple elephant. ODB was right. And Kanye is just Kanye. Somebody’s gonna get called out so don’t hold a grudge when it happens. If Tyler, The Creator were to ever get nominated for a Grammy, he’d spend 90 percent of his speech time informing audiences how much he thinks Bruno Mars bites.
Despite all of the hoopla and haterade, the Grammy Awards do mean something to us hip-hop junkies, as award show jester Kanye even admitted: “Little kids, 6 years [old], that are singing in front of the mirror. They’re also thinking about their Grammy speech.”
When the Reverend Jesse Jackson gets involved, like when he did in 1996 urging a boycott of the Grammys, citing inattention to people of colour (POC), given the decision to cut over 30 award categories this year, some of which affects music from strongly identified black and POC communities that have been disenfranchised (traditional gospel, Zydeco or Cajun music, Latin jazz), this could mushroom into a much larger issue
Methinks the debate extends way past one single awards show, but involves many elements of the broader society and its cautious incorporation of highly visible, yet still misunderstood art forms like hip-hop. Real talk. In the coming years, the only spin doctors I want to see in the audience are the DJs.