The Grammy Rap Committee Didn’t Nominate Macklemore, But the Academy Let Him In Anyway…

The Grammys are supposedly about honoring the best releases. But what if your genre’s Grammy committee doesn’t want you nominated?

This is supposedly the situation surrounding Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. The duo has been nominated for seven awards including Best Rap Album, Best Rap Song, Best Rap Performance, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. But an anonymous source who attended the Grammy committee meeting told the AP “most rap committee members felt the duo shouldn’t qualify for the rap categories because of their success on mainstream radio and their appeal in the pop world”.

The Rap Committee declined all of their submissions last year. Basically, they think Macklemore & Ryan Lewis are more of a pop duo.

Later, at a general Grammy Committee meeting, everyone from all genres came together to decide what classification to give Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. They overturned the rap committee’s decision by a landslide.

Why does this even matter? Fader has quoted an essay by Rob Kenner that sums it up nicely:

“famous people tend to get more votes from clueless Academy members, regardless of the quality of their work. This is especially true in specialized categories like reggae and, to a lesser extent, hip-hop, where many voting members of the Recording Academy (who tend to skew older than the demographic for rap music) may not be well acquainted with the best releases in any given year.”

Oh, and Macklemore doesn’t even think he should win best rap album. He said the award should go to Kendrick Lamar.