“Dirty Computer” by Janelle Monae is an excellent album. Taking influences from R&B legends like Prince and putting her own vision and modern twist on them, Monae created a statement on feminism and equality.
“Golden Hour” by Kacey Musgraves is a predominantly mediocre album. A few bright spots exist in an album that is weighed down by mundane and immature writing that are barely a step above Miley Cyrus’ most recent effort.
Guess which one won Album of the Year at the Grammys?
This is not new. The Grammys have a long tradition of awarding album of the year to a white artist, rather than a black artist the people very often believe to be far greater in quality and cultural relevance.
The issue has only recently been criticized by music fans. The breaking point was in 2016 when Taylor Swift’s “1989” defeated Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly,” an album many believed to be the best hip-hop album of this decade.
The trend only continued the following year when Adele’s worst album defeated Beyonce’s best album.
Even when a white person doesn’t win, the music that is selected is easy listening and most appealing to white people.
Bruno Mars with his retro throwback “24K Magic” defeated the challenging introspection of Kendrick Lamar’s “DAMN.,” the self-reflection and admittance of guilt in Jay-Z’s “4:44,” and the experimental musical overhaul in Childish Gambino’s “Awaken, My Love.”
You might be thinking that this is all a matter of taste and opinion, and that it has nothing to do with race.
President of the Recording Academy Neil Portnow said in an interview with Pitchfork, “We don’t, as musicians, in my humble opinion, listen to music based on gender or race or ethnicity. When you go to vote on a piece of music—at least the way that I approach it—is you almost put a blindfold on, and you listen.”
It must be only a coincidence that out of 61 Album of the Year Grammys that have been awarded, only 10 of them have been to a black person, and of those 10, only two of those were rap albums.
Gaslighting the misrepresentation of black people by claiming their work is mediocre happens in all aspects of our culture. But, even with affirmative action, black men are often still misrepresented.
Ignoring the race of the artist is getting rid of a very important layer of the artform itself. Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, Childish Gambino and Jay-Z have made many powerful and inspiring pieces of art describing the experience of being a black person in America. They explore topics like oppression, fear and anxiety of modern times and the effects of past racism affecting us today.
Removing their race from the music is outright disrespectful to the artist and misses the point of some of the finest work that has ever come out of hip hop. To tell them that their race should not be a factor of their human experience is condescending at best, and at worst ignorant to the way social constructs in a culture work.
If the Grammys don’t diversify their academy, acknowledge what is culturally relevant and reward genuine excellence, it will forever remain on the wrong side of history.
Genuinely excellent albums will go on to stand the test of time, influence future artists, make an impact on the world and the Grammys will lose viewership and credibility by not acknowledging it.
Instead of looking at a list of prestigious winners that people know to have genuinely changed music, people will look at the easy listening music they picked and continuously say “who even is this?”
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