There have been a couple of changes made to the award process within the Recording Academy, which puts on the music-specific GRAMMY Awards on an annual basis. Several categories have been renamed to better reflect the content, as well as one minor swap for eligibility in the musical theater zone.
One of the most popular categories for readers of our site is Best Rap/Sung Performance. The award was won by DJ Khaled, Nipsey Hussle, and John Legend last year for "Higher." The category will now be referred to as Best Melodic Rap Performance.
The definition of the category has been described as such: "This category is intended for performances that use the delivery of rap and melody over modern production. This performance requires a strong and clear presence of melody combined with rap cadence, and is inclusive of dialects, lyrics or performance elements from non-rap genres including R&B, rock, country, electronic or more."
A more important change, for obvious reasons, happened to the Best Urban Contemporary Album category. As you're well aware, the term "urban" is ridiculously dated and places artists in a box. The new category name will be Best Progressive R&B Album. Last year, Lizzo brought home the prize.
In addition, several Latin categories have been meshed together to remove the "Latin Urban" spot.
What do you make of the changes?