Once a year, music from around the world is funneled into categories for voting to be held on the best selection. The Grammys, the biggest music award show for 66 years, was held last weekend and what an event it was. Here are the top winners:
- Phoebe Bridgers: 4 Grammys (1 solo win, 3 wins with her trio band, boygenius)
- Boygenius, SZA, Victoria Monét, Killer Mike: 3 Grammys
- Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Finneas, Miley Cirus: 2 Grammys
The awards have millions of viewers per year, this year drawing in the biggest viewership in 4 years at 16.9 million viewers, this making sure their show can run as successfully and smoothly as possible. With a large number of viewers, comes with a large amount of opinion and disagreement, specifically on the choices of winners. There has and always be disputes on who the true winners should be, but there are some instances where the public is really left scratching their heads. One popular example is in the rap category of this year’s awards.
Killer Mike, a popular rap artist and activist, half of the hip hop duo, “Run The Jewels” had a clean 3 win sweep of the rap category in this year’s Grammys. After his exuberant speeches, he was shortly arrested and taken from the event for unrelated reasons.
The awards he received were for Best Rap Album, for his June 2023 album “MICHAEL” while Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance were awarded to his single “Scientists & Engineers”, featuring Future, André 3000, and Eryn Allen Kane, from said album.
Many fans of rap were not pleased by the Grammys selections, specifically the pick for ‘Rap Album of the Year’ This was because Killer Mike’s “MICHAEL” was the least streamed project out of the nominees.
2024 Rap Album of the Year Nominees:
Utopia – Travis Scott – 2.7 Billion streams
Her Loss – Drake & 21 Savage – 2.9 Billion streams
Kings Disease III – Nas – 57 Million streams
Heroes & Villains – Metro Boomin – 4.2 Billion streams
MICHAEL – Killer Mike – 40 Million Streams
While the streams of a project don’t directly dictate its quality, it is a huge factor and usually can give a partial guideline to who will win and who won’t. It is important to understand the grammys is more of an electoral college type vote where higher-up peers and producers in music are who is voting, not the public.
These turnouts from the rap category sparked outrages across social media by fans of hip hop, mainly fans of Travis Scott. Fans of the popular hip hop trap artist had a feeling of deja vu as a very similar let down was experienced during the 2019 grammys, where Cardi B’s ‘Invasion of Privacy’ won, over Scotts previous album, ‘Astroworld’.
Travis Scott has 10 Grammy nominations and 0 wins. When it was announced Travis Scott’s 2023 release would be a nominee for rap album, it was believed by many that the grammys would redeem their “snub” from Travis half a decade ago. This was further backed up by planning to have Scott perform 3 tracks at the award show.
In his mix of low and high energy 3 song performance, During his hit song ‘FE!N’ Travis Scott screamed into the microphone, “They slept on me 10 times!” Blatantly mocking the grammys and his 10-0 record at the academy awards. As well as tweeting a raised eyebrow emoji, just moments after his let down.
Followers of rap music and Travis Scott’s music started a popular hashtag on Twitter/X, #WHOISKILLERMIKE, making fun of the grammy’s for the least popular, least streamed project and artist winning, even some people starting to speculate their trust in the grammys and their choices. This complication is not only recognized by fans.
All-Star influential hip hop artist and producer, Jay-Z made a speech after his win for the “Dr. Dre Global Impact Award” where he calls out the show for its incongruity with its winners, specifically his wife Beyoncé who has the most grammys ever, [32] but has never won Album of the Year.
“We want y’all to get it right — at least get it close to right,” Jay-Z said. “I don’t want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than everyone and never won Album of the Year. So even by your own metrics that doesn’t work.”
