UPDATE: Make it five.
That’s right, now that things have gotten underway at the 58th Grammy Awards, awards continue to be handed out and speeches are made. Ice Cube and his son, O’Shea Jackson, just presented the award for Best Rap Album, and Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly beat out albums from Drake, J. Cole, Nicki Minaj and Dr. Dre to give the Compton rep his 5th victory of the night in 5 tries. He’s got 6 more categories to go, including Album of the Year. Stay tuned.
ORIGINAL STORY: This year, Kendrick Lamar was nominated for a whopping 11 Grammy Awards, just one off of Michael Jackson‘s record-setting pace in 1991, when the King of Pop was nominated for an eye-popping 12 awards. After going 0-for-7 in the 2014 ceremony, Kendrick took home his first two trophies in an off year last year, thanks to To Pimp A Butterfly‘s lead single, “i,” and this year, he’s going for broke. If he doesn’t hit a home run by the end of the night, he’ll likely rest easy knowing he doubled last year’s total before the show even got started.
As has been tradition for several years now, some of the less “marquee” categories get announced in a special Grammys pre-telecast, and Kendrick Lamar was named as winner of four of them: Best Music Video (“Bad Blood” with Taylor Swift), Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (“These Walls” with Anna Wise and Bilal), Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance (“Alright” with Pharrell Williams). Cornrow Kenny’s done some heavy lifting in the pre-show, and he’s still got something special planned for tonight. LL Cool J says it’s something else.
