Hip Hop and women were the trending topics at the 2019 Grammys.
Female acts took home the top prizes including, Album of the Year and Best New Artist. Aside from Cardi B making history as the first solo female act to win Best Rap Album, Childish Gambino made history winning Grammys for Record and Song of the Year for “This Is America.”
Gambino’s historic win comes decades after rappers struggled for the top categories or to even get acknowledged.
Ludwig Goransson, who co-wrote and produced Gambino’s song, said he was surprised a rap song had never won in the past.
“If you listen to the radio or if just you watch our culture or look at the most downloaded and streamed artists and bought albums, you see what’s at the top and what people listen to and you see what people get inspired by. It’s about time something like this happened,” he said in a recent interview.
Six women were nominated for Best New Artist, and five of the eight album-of-the-year nominees were women, including Brandi Carlile, who described herself as “a kid from the ’90s from Lilith Fair.”
“Those women were just dominating those platforms. They were dominating those arena and amphitheater stages. They were getting record deals. They were becoming record executives themselves,” Carlile said. But watching those gains “backslide for the last 20 years has been heartbreaking.”
The 2019 Grammys definitely aimed for racial and gender diversity this year. Next year will be interesting.
