The Recording Academy is responsible for awarding the yearly Grammy Awards. While a Grammy Award remains a prestigious achievement for many artists, the awards ceremony is not without its critics. Most recently, Jay-Z expressed his frustration at the Grammy’s failure to properly recognize Hip Hop, as well as his wife Beyoncé. However, his displeasures with the Academy extend far into the past.
This institution is currently the highest authority when it comes to recognizing outstanding achievements in the music industry, worldwide. At the same time, they seem to have a long history of overlooking artists, especially within the Hip Hop genre. From Eminem to Kanye West, and Nicki Minaj and Drake; here’s a list of rappers who have had to condemn the Academy for treating artists unfairly. While frustrations with the Grammys stretch back decades, it seems the institution is still failing to properly recognize the genre.
Read More: Did The 2024 Grammys Get It Right?
Public Enemy
In 1989, Public Enemy, sat out the Grammys along with a few other Hip Hop bigwigs. It was a brave decision to make especially since 1989 marked the first year that hip-hop had its own category. The pack of celebrity Grammy critics was led by Def Jams’ Russell Simmons, because the artists had been informed that their category would not be televised, blaming it on time restrictions. Public Enemy boycotted again in 1991 under similar circumstances.
Thirty years later, one of Public Enemy’s founding members, Chuck D, spoke out against the Recording Academy. This happened when the former head of the Recording Academy, Deborah Dugan, was put on leave just before the 2020 awards. Notably, Public Enemy was set to receive a Lifetime Achievement award that year, but Chuck D supported Dugan and chose to lambast the Academy for its actions instead. Public Enemy would eventually be nominated six times for a Grammy but win none.
Eminem
Eminem has had quite a successful journey with the Grammys with fifteen trophies to his name. However, more than a dozen gold-plated statues were not enough to stop him from joining the list of Grammy critics. The reason for Eminem’s boycott turned out to be quite simple: he had been snubbed way too many times for the "Album Of The Year” category. In 2001, Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP lost the award to Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature. Two years after that, the same thing happened with The Eminem Show album, which lost to Norah Jones’ Come Away with Me.
Although he performed four times at the award ceremony after 2001, and up until 2011, Eminem seems to be done with the Grammys for good. However, it was a rather quiet boycott, until 2018, when he was interviewed by Sway Calloway. When Calloway asked if he would ever honor an invite from the Recording Academy again, he replied: "My answer is no for a hundred million years,"
Lil Wayne
Lil Wayne is another major name to join the list of Grammy critics. Just one day after the 63rd annual Grammy Awards in 2021, he tweeted “F-k the Grammys” on a bright and early Monday morning. He had not been invited, and Weezy took the Grammy snub personally. At the peak of his career, he had won four awards in one night at the 2009 Grammy Awards. Later in 2017, he also won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance for “No Problem.” It’s quite the mystery that one of the most important names in Hip Hop was left out of the invite list.
Lil Wayne let out his thoughts in a few extra tweets. “As an artist, when I see da Grammys coming up & I’m not involved nor invited; I wonder. Is it me, my musik, or just another technicality?” he wrote. “I look around w respect & wonder competitively am I not worthy?! Then I look around & see 5 Grammys looking bak at me & I go to the studio.”
Drake
With a disappointing five wins out of 55 nominations, it’s no wonder Drake is also at the forefront of the Grammy critics. In 2022, Drake's management requested the Academy to remove him as a nominee for two award categories: Best Rap Album and Best Rap Performance. Before then he had been quite vocal about many dissatisfaction he had with the award; especially since his four Grammys were strictly in the rap category and he deserved more.
Drake was also vocal in his support for The Weeknd, who famously boycotted the award in 2021. However, his most popular anti-Grammy act took place in 2019 when he was awarded best rap song for “God's Plan.” Although he declined an invitation to perform, Drake attended the ceremony. He received his award, and in his acceptance speech, reminded everyone that “...we're playing in an Opinion-based sport, not a factual-based sport. So it's not the NBA…”
Drake continued until the producers cut the speech off and continued to commercial for home viewers. The feed was also cut off in the media room at the Los Angeles Staples center. On the day of the 2024 Grammys, Drake reposted a clip from his speech that night. Why? Just to remind everyone that he still didn't take the Grammys seriously.
Kanye West
Kanye West, one of the most awarded artists of all time with 21 Grammy wins, shocked many when he shared a Twitter video in September 2020. It was a video of the rapper urinating on one of his Grammy statues. This act came after he had posted a string of tweets. Ye criticized the music industry, and called it a "modern-day slave ship." In response to the video, the Recording Academy decided to ban him from performing at their awards ceremony.
The infamous pissing video would not be his first time attacking the Grammys however. In 2017, he threatened to boycott the award in support of Frank Ocean whose albums had received no nominations. This was even though West himself had been nominated for eight awards that same year. He launched a more verbal attack in 2015 in support of Beyoncé.
Jay-Z
Jay-Z has long been one of the most popular Grammy critics around. In fact, he has quite a history of airing out his frustration with the Grammy Awards' treatment of rap music. The first time was in 1999, when he boycotted the awards because rapper DMX didn't get nominated. Soon after, in 2002, he commented that "rappers deserve more attention from the Grammy committee and from the whole world.”
Things were quiet again for a few years, until 2018. Hov was nominated for eight Grammys (including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year), and didn't win any. It was the first time he would be on the receiving end of Grammy losses. Subsequently, in his song "APESHIT" as one half of The Carters, he made sure to reference the incident. "Tell the Grammys forget that 0-for-8 sh*t," he rapped.
However, his most recent attack took place on the stage at the 2024 Grammys. While receiving the Dr. Dre Global Impact Grammy Award, Jay-Z spoke about how unfair it was that his wife Beyoncé had never won Album of the Year. Widely considered one of the most recurrent Grammy snubs, both critics and fans alike have expressed their displeasure at Beyonce’s repeated losses to white artists, despite having more impactful projects.
Nicki Minaj
In 2012, when Nicki Minaj earned multiple nominations, she went home empty handed. A few years later, she criticized the Recording Academy for not acknowledging her influence in a viral tweet. “Never forget the Grammys didn’t give me my best new artist award when I had 7 songs simultaneously charting on billboard & bigger first week than any female rapper in the last decade- went on to inspire a generation. They gave it to the white man Bon Iver.” Altogether, Nicki Minaj has been nominated for a Grammy ten times but never won any.
Her disappointment continued in 2024 when she was wrongly declared as a Grammy winner. In the Best Rap Song category, Killer Mike won for "Scientists & Engineers.” However, the official Grammys account on X (formerly known as Twitter), incorrectly attributed the award to "Barbie World” by Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj. Although the post was swiftly removed, the damage was already done.
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