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Jay-Z Made Peace With The Grammys. Why Are The Grammys Still At War With Hip Hop?

Jay-Z Made Peace With The Grammys. Why Are The Grammys Still At War With Hip Hop?

Written by Dana Sanchez

Jan 29, 2018

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Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, 48, went into Sunday’s Grammy awards with eight nominations for his album “4:44,” in which he made a commentary on race in America and examined his infidelity that wife Beyonce sang about in her 2016 album, “Lemonade.”

Jay Z has won 21 Grammy awards over his career, but the hip-hop artist has not yet won the top honors for song, record or album of the year. He was nominated for all of them Sunday at the 2018 Grammy awards.

Jay Z won nothing for his “4:44” album. Instead, the honors went to Bruno Mars, who performs in a variety of styles, musical genres, and influences including pop, rock, reggae, R&B, soul, and hip hop. Mars won all three Grammys for best song, best record and best album.

That’s a sign that the Grammys are out of touch and rooted in the past, Rodney Carmichael wrote for NPR:

That, in no way, erases the impact of Bruno Mars’ album win. Being a man of color himself, he acknowledges R&B predecessors from Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis to Teddy Riley among his greatest influences. But in 2018, he’s also a safe Grammy pick who echoes the sounds of the past with performances that recall an era of black music more palatable to the mainstream now that it’s two decades in the recycled past. His chops may be rooted within the realm of hip-hop, as The New York Times Magazine’s Jody Rosen argued today, but it’s the fact that his music is also pop-friendly, drawing from many genres, that makes him easy for Grammy voters to embrace.”

The night before the Grammy awards, Jay-Z talked about his complex relationship with music’s highest honors, where the odds are historically stacked against hip-hop artists winning top accolades, Reuters reported.

He talked about his decision to boycott the Grammy awards in 1998 when rapper DMX received no nominations despite having two hit albums out that year. Jay-Z spoke while being honored by the Recording Academy at veteran music producer Clive Davis’ annual pre-Grammy party on Saturday.

In 60 years of the Grammys, just two hip-hop albums have ever won album of the year: Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” in 1999 and Outkast’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” in 2004.

He was honored on Saturday for not only reshaping rap but also for entrepreneurship, including reshaping the music business with his streaming service Tidal, Reuters reported.

Singer Alicia Keys said Jay-Z’s music was the soundtrack to her life growing up. She sang a medley of his hits including “Hard Knock Life,” “Encore” and their New York anthem, “Empire State of Mind.”

“The Academy, they’re human like we are and they’re voting on things that they like, it’s subjective,”  Jay Z told the audience at the pre-Grammy party. “We care because we’re seeing the most incredible artists standing on that stage and we aspire to be there, so I was like, I have to be here … It’s our duty to make sure that not only are we making the greatest art, that we’re upholding and supporting things that are super real.”

Jay Z attended the Grammy Awards Sunday with Beyonce and their daughter, Blue Ivy Carter.

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(Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP)

Sunday’s hip-hop snub reflects a “flawed voting process that increasingly fails to reflect the will of the majority in pop or politics,” Carmichael wrote for NPR. “The electorate, in this case, is an aging academy membership in dire need of hip replacement surgery … But there’s a bigger takeaway regarding the Academy’s record on hip-hop that’s easy to miss. … Not even Eminem, the genre’s great white hope and one of the best emcees of all time, has won in the coveted AOY (album of the year) category. Nominated for ‘The Marshall Mathers’ LP in 2001, he lost to Steely Dan.”

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