Words by Ime Ekpo
In recent days, the amount of weight a Grammy award holds in the culture of hip-hop has certainly been questioned.
It appears that Drake has had enough with the Grammys. The three-time Grammy award winning rapper has made the decision to exclude his 2017 Billboard 200 top charter, More Life for a Grammy award consideration. The Canadian rapper seems to be highly skeptical about the Recording Academy award, due to the vivid infringement plagued on the hip-hop music genre.
Rappers have been denied proper achievement in top music categories due to the unwarranted competition against country, pop, and rock artists. With such an unfair comparison in awards show of musical “prestige”, this has opened the door for appropriation by artists from other genres, causing the severe overshadow of artists from the respective genre of, Hip-Hop. On the top category stage, Hip-Hop has only won Album of the Year twice, with Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1999) and Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2004).
Released earlier this year in March, “More Life” debuted on the Billboard 200 at number one, selling over 2 million copies and setting groundbreaking streaming records, with thanks to hit tracks “Fake Love,” “Passionfruit” and “Portland.” Drake reportedly has not submitted any of the songs from the album for potential wins in categories in the likes of song of the year, record of the year and best rap song.
Drake’s Grammy “boycott” realistically started earlier this year when he was purposely absent from this year’s Grammys, despite winning two awards for Best Rap Solo Performance and Best Rap Song, “Hotline Bling.”
There is a great chance songs the “Forever” rapper has been featured on such as Nicki Minaj’s “No Frauds,” and DJ Khaled’s “To The Max,” will get nominated. Well, we will find out on November 28th when all 83 Grammy award categories are released.
Set in New York City at Madison Square Garden next year, the 60th annual Grammy Awards will take place on January 28th.
