There was a precedent for this. In 1989, rap duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, nominated for Best Rap Performance for their crossover hit “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” boycotted the Grammys after the academy decided not to televise the award presentation. Though the duo won the award, they, Public Enemy, and Slick Rick did not attend the ceremony.
According to the Recording Academy, album submissions are reviewed by more than 350 experts throughout the music industry, all of whom work to make sure the records are sorted into their appropriate categories. Once the submissions are filed into rap, jazz, classical, and so on, first-round ballots are sent to members in good dues standing, and they’re asked to vote only in their areas of expertise. Both the first-round ballots and final ballots are tabulated by an independent accounting firm, and the winner is announced.
Despite that process, some have criticized the academy for seeming out of touch with what’s really popular in modern music. They say voters don’t choose based on artistic merit, that they mark the same familiar names year after year. Still, that doesn’t explain why reggae icon Bob Marley and guitar god Jimi Hendrix never won Grammys at all, and why someone like Jay-Z has gone home without a trophy from time to time. In 2018, for instance, the rap mogul’s thirteenth studio album, 4:44, earned eight Grammy nominations, but he lost in every single category, including Album of the Year, Best Rap Album, and Record of the Year for “The Story of O.J.” The academy, he told Billboard, is “human like we are, and they are voting on things that they like. We can pretend we don’t care, but we do. We really care because we are seeing the most incredible artists stand on that stage, and we aspire to be that.” In an essay posted to Complex, music journalist Rob Kenner—a voting member of the academy—scrutinized the process, calling it disorganized. “Along with the official guidelines,” Kenner wrote, “I soon learned another unwritten rule during private conversations with other committee members: be careful about green-lighting an album by someone who was really famous if you don’t want to see that album win a Grammy. Because famous people tend to get more votes from clueless Academy members, regardless of the quality of their work.”
The Recording Academy established a private committee to scrutinize voter submissions after Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down won Album of the Year over Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. and Prince’s Purple Rain in 1985. As cultural website Vox points out, “Richie was far from the best choice that year, and his win helped create the public perception that the Grammys were cut off from what ‘good music’ meant.” In Kenner’s essay, published before the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, he speculated about the likelihood of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis winning Best Rap Album over more deserving records like Kendrick’s good kid, m.A.A.d city. “Because of their tremendous commercial success and media exposure there’s a good chance they will win, despite the fact that most hip-hop aficionados would prefer to see the award go to pretty much anybody else—be it Kanye West, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, or Drake,” he wrote.
In September 2018, in an attempt to resolve its long-standing struggles with diversity, the Recording Academy invited nine hundred music creators to join its ranks as voting members. The request, part of a recommendation earlier that year from the academy’s Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion, went out to producers, songwriters, instrumentalists, and vocalists who were women or people of color under the age of thirty-nine. The academy also diversified the composition of its nomination review committees, which determine the final Grammy nominations across categories. “We need a culture change overall,” task force chair Tina Tchen told Billboard. “We’re living through a moment where we’re seeing a national culture change on these issues. The music industry and Recording Academy are not immune to that.”
In the years since the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, the careers of Kendrick and Macklemore have gone in separate directions. In 2016, Macklemore released a song called “White Privilege II,” which, much like “White Privilege” in 2005, found the rapper addressing what other white people with similar platforms have largely failed to do: the fact that his skin color afforded him opportunities and safety that black people simply didn’t have. The song arrived at a time of heightened tension between blacks and whites: in the United States, unarmed minorities were being killed by mostly white police officers at an alarming rate, and anyone with a smartphone could see bullets penetrate black bodies on endless loop. It seemed Macklemore wanted to help the cause, to stand in solidarity with those who had lost loved ones and those who were tired of seeing their neighbors murdered without recourse. Yet as the song unfolded, “White Privilege II” became more about Macklemore’s own identity struggles and less about the people he wanted to support. In one moment, he wanted to march with those fighting the injustices; the next he was off to the side, wondering if he should have been there in the first place. Ultimately, the song raised questions about Macklemore’s authenticity and whether or not he should be inserting his voice into black issues. His perspective threatened to overshadow that of the activists on the ground doing the real work. Such was the dilemma of analyzing Macklemore: while he should have been commended for at least trying to address topics that other white celebrities wouldn’t touch, he ended up doing too much to show that he was
