The Grammys Still Suck
Music, maybe more so than any other medium, is subjective. There are tons of different music that means so much to different people, it is hard to quantify that, much less give us five options, and tell us those are the “best” of that year. Every year, no matter who gets nominated or who wins what award, there are angry viewers on Twitter telling their followers why their favorite artist should have won or why the Grammy’s are meaningless. Last night was no different, with outcries on the timeline after nearly every award announcement.
These Grammy’s were hard to get through, as they usually are. Alicia Keys struggled through her monologues, the commercials were more abundant than performances or awards, and many of today’s top music stars declined to even attend, including Ariana Grande, Childish Gambino, Lorde, and Kendrick Lamar. J-Lo also was prominently featured in the Motown tribute for… some reason. It did have its moments, though. Michelle Obama helped to kick the show off with Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Alicia Keys, and Jada Pinkett-Smith, speaking on empowering women and how important it is for them to be represented. The Dolly Parton celebration, featuring artists including her God-Daughter Miley Cyrus was well done and sounded great. Lady Gaga brought the house down with her solo rendition of the smash-hit, “Shallow.” Breakout artist H.E.R. not only collected her first two Grammys (Best R&B Performance and Best R&B Album), but she introduced herself to a whole new audience with her performance of “Hard Place.”
What may have stuck out most last night was Drake’s acceptance speech after winning Best Rap Song for “God’s Plan. Drake got up in front of everyone and basically told the world that the Grammys mean nothing. “All my peers that make music from their heart that do things pure and tell the truth, I wanna let you know we're playing in an opinion-based sport not a factual-based sport. So it's not the NBA where at the end of the year you're holding a trophy because you made the right decisions or won the games.” He then went on to say, “But my point is you've already won if you have people singing your songs word for word, if you're a hero in your hometown. Look, if there's people who have regular jobs who are coming out in the rain, in the snow, spending their hard-earned money to buy tickets to come to your shows, you don't need this right here. I promise you, you already won." The Recording Academy cut off Drake’s mic and then cut to commercial. This is not the first time someone has spoken out against an award show, at said award show, but this one will have resonated with a lot of people, and he echoed mine, and many others, disinterest with the awards themselves.
The category that was perhaps the most anticipated, due to the circumstances surrounding it, was rap album of the year. The nominees were Nipsey Hussle, Cardi B, Travis Scott, Pusha T, and Mac Miller. Cardi B took home the award, becoming the first female solo artist to do so. That is great, and I congratulate her for doing so. The anger surrounding her win has much less to do with her (though there are detractors of hers) but has much more to do with who did not win.
Mac Miller shockingly and tragically died September 7th, 2018, just over a month after the release of his 5th studio album, Swimming. The Recording Academy invited Mac’s parents to the show, and they said, if he were to win, they would accept the award on his behalf. There was much discussion leading up to the award about how it should be handled. There were many who believed that while tragic, Miller simply did not have the best rap album of the year. Others, including me, believed that even if you did not think Swimming was the best rap album, that Mac Miller had earned it as an artist, and that if this was not the year, the year would have come for him to win. I saw this as an opportunity to honor a young man whose music touched the lives of millions, but also whose life meant so much more than the art he made. In the wake of his death millions of fans, peers, and strangers alike shared stories of Mac. Not a single bad thing to be seen anywhere. That says a lot about the character of a person, especially in today’s age of the internet where nothing is sacred. Fellow artists shared stories about how Mac gave them their start or their first big break, or how he brought them on tour, or even just sending a text or a call telling them he thought they were great and to keep going with their passion. Mac Miller touched the lives of millions, whether he met them personally or not. He was also an artist at the top of his game, and only improving. He burst on to the scene as what could only be described as a “frat rapper”, and from that point on he worked every day, every project, to continue to reinvent himself and his music. Swimming was not a perfect album. But, it was the pinnacle of the artist that Mac was becoming, and just a taste of what was to come for years, had we not lost him.
I believe that on principle alone Mac deserved that Grammy. The academy invited his parents, they went out there, representing him, honoring their beloved son, and all they got was a 3 second clip of him. The academy had the chance to do something truly special for an incredible young man lost all too soon, but as they have been known to do, missed an opportunity and embarrassed everyone involved. Ariana Grande said it best in her now deleted tweets, “F*ck”, “Trash”, and “Literal Bulls*it”.
The Recording Academy and the Grammys have long been considered a joke. From the lack of women representation in nominees and winners, to the president of the Academy saying that women needed to “step up” if they wanted to start being nominated, to the ludicrously long run times and a low number of actual awards given out during the program. This year was another low moment in their history and I for one will not be counting down the days until next years abomination.
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