The first Grammy Awards were held on 4th May 1959 simultaneously in Beverley Hills and New York City, where only 28 Grammys were given out. The most prestigious and coveted category that has been presented every year since 1959 is the infamous Album of the year.
And only 10 Black people have ever won it.
It took 15 years for a Black artist to win. In 1974, Stevie Wonder took home the Grammy for his album ‘Inversions’ and went on to win the award two more times. The other nine winners include Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, Natalie Cole, Lionel Richie, Lauryn Hill, Outkast, Herbie Hancock, Whitney Houston, and Quincy Jones. Between 1990 and 2008, 7 of them won Album of the year. However, since Herbie Hancock’s success in 2008, no Black person has won. Instead, of receiving recognition for their era defying records, like Prince with ‘1999!’, the Black community has consistently lost to white men with far lower metascores* such as U2 or Mumford and Sons… For many white artists, winning a Grammy is a feat of race.
Instead, Black artists are restricted to racialized categories such as Best Urban Contemporary, win a variety of the smaller awards and are excluded from the ‘Big 4’ categories. Most notably, Beyoncé has won 18 out of 24 of her Grammys in these smaller categories. In 2019, Tyler the Creator won Best Rap Album despite submitting a genre-defying project which he considered to be Pop. This demonstrates how Black creators are shoved into an ‘urban’ box no matter the type of record they make. In a post-show interview, Tyler commented ‘I’m very grateful that what I made could just be acknowledged in a world like this, but also it sucks that whenever we, and I mean guys that look like me, do anything that’s genre-bending, or anything, they always put it in a rap or urban category. When I hear that, I’m just like, why can’t we just be in pop? Half of me feels like the rap nomination was a backhanded compliment.’ This is exacerbated by the fact that even when forced into these boxes, they still often lose to their white counterparts. Every single time Eminem has been nominated, he has won Best Rap Album of the Year beating the likes of Missy Elliot, Dr Dre, Busta Rhymes etc. who are yet to take home the golden gramophone despite their legendary status and impact on the world of rap.
In fact, even recognising Rap as a genre took almost 40 years – the first Best Rap Album was awarded in 1995. This was thanks to the work of Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff, who were asked to perform at the 1989 Awards but were told it would not be televised unlike the rest of the show. As a principle, they refused to attend the ceremony stating, “Our boycott was to open their eyes to rap music so next year, some rap group will be able to perform at the Grammys, and the awards will be televised, because the music is large enough and important enough to be on that show.”
Voting corruption and lack of representation has led to the overrepresentation of white award winners. Deborah Dugan, the former head of the Recording Academy, revealed that the Grammy Board push for nominations of artists who they have a pre-existing relationship with. Furthermore, there is a small group at the top of the Academy who tend to sway the votes of the 12,000 members. Who are they, I hear you ask? Unsurprisingly – Old White Men. Academy Award shows, like the Oscars, have judging panels which are 91% white and 75% male panels. However, this does not stop the judges from fiercely asserting that ‘there is no race problem’. Ex-CEO Neil Portman denies the allegation of racial bias and said that ‘Chance the Rapper doesn’t win Best New Artist if you don’t have a diverse membership’. Portman also remarked that they were delighted to have given Frank Ocean (who unfortunately now refuses to submit his music for nomination alongside several other Black artists due to the racial bias) ‘a platform very early in his career’. His quotes insinuate that without the aid of the Grammys, these creatives would never have achieved their status today, and that they should be thankful for the work the Academy did to help them in their careers. This is the same white saviour rhetoric that the Grammys have resorted to every time they speak on race.
This white male majority allows an overwhelming number of white creators to win and sets the tone that white culture is more valid and impactful than that of BIPOC and is therefore more worthy of recognition. The lack of BIPOC winners is a direct result of systematic and covert racism.
To put it simply: Beyoncé’s I am … Sasha Fierce lost to Taylor Swifts Fearless, Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid. M.A.A.D City lost to Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories and Kanye West’s Late Registration lost to U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
Do with that what you will.
*Metascore is a website that uses reviews of music, cinema, tv shows etc. to generate a weighted average and most objective, nuanced score
