Apparently, it’s not just the Oscars that are “so white”; now it’s the Grammys, too.
According to a piece in The New York Times, a new boycott is brewing in the music industry against too many awards going to white artists.
The straw that broke the camel’s back this year was when Adele won Album of the Year instead of Beyonce, who can now count Sunday night as the third year in a row she was snubbed in that category. (Not to worry, though; Queen Bey, as she’s called, has racked up 62 nominations and 22 golden trophies. Not too shabby.) But since skin color is more important than accomplishments to the Left, the Grammys has been dubbed racist.
The last black female to win album of the year was Lauryn Hill in 1999. However, black artists OutKast, Ray Charles, and Herbie Hancock have all taken home awards in that category since then, though only ten black artists have ever won the category since the award show began in 1959, as the NYT points out.
Writer Joe Coscarelli said rumors of the boycott were “already bubbling” before the broadcast:
“More and more artists are going to boycott and step away,” Laura Stylez, a co-host of “Ebro in the Morning” on the New York hip-hop and R&B station Hot 97, said in an interview, citing the absence of Drake, Frank Ocean, Justin Bieber and Kanye West from this year’s show, despite their major eligible releases and nominations. “You don’t want to lose today’s generation. They feel like they’re not represented.”
Charlamagne Tha God, an influential radio personality from “The Breakfast Club” on Power 105.1, named Grammy voters his “Donkey of the Day” for their album of the year selection. “I tell artists all the time: Go where you’re celebrated, not where you’re tolerated,” he said, adding that Beyoncé had been “robbed.”
“They absolutely, positively got it wrong,” he said. “The Grammy committee should all feel foolish this morning, because even Adele acknowledged that she should not have won album of the year.”
As Cocarelli notes, the “show was not entirely homogenous,” as there was a Prince tribute by Bruno Mars, a lengthy performance by Beyonce, multiple wins for Chance the Rapper, and a very political performance by A Tribe Called Quest.
However, he continued, “the broader pattern was hard to ignore. In the last five years especially, albums by [Frank] Ocean, [Kendrick] Lamar and Beyoncé have been passed over for the top award in favor of releases by white artists: Mumford & Sons, Daft Punk, Beck, Taylor Swift and Adele.”
As for Beyonce’s reaction to the controversy, she “has not spoken about her Grammy defeat,” Coscarelli said. After the show, she and her husband, Jay-Z, released an exclusive song through Tidal, his streaming platform, which will ensure they will continue to rake in the dough.
But boycotters gotta boycott.
