In the past, the Grammy’s have had a less than stellar track record when it comes to diversity. Just last year, Beyonce’s Lemonade, a revolutionary album that addressed race, police brutality, and infidelity. Her album lost to Adele’s 25, a much more traditional album. The year before that, Kendrick Lamar’s album To Pimp a Butterfly lost to Taylor Swift’s 1989. Both Adele and Swift’s albums were massive successes, but people couldn’t ignore the Grammy’s history of snubbing artists of color. Adele herself was critical of the choice in 2017, saying, “I couldn’t possibly accept this award…this album to me, the Lemonade album, was just so monumental.”
However, in 2018, the Grammy nominations seem to finally be celebrating artists of color. All five tracks nominated for record of the year came from artists of color as well as four out of five nominees for album and song of the year. Other artists nominated include Lil Uzi Vert, Khalid, Logic, Migos, Cardi B, and Sza, which shows that the Grammy’s are finally giving real attention to the Hip-Hop genre. This is is now America’s most popular music genre. Other nominees include Lusi Fonsi and Daddy Yankee who are nominated for their bilingual anthem Despacito in the song and record of the year categories.
This year the Grammy’s finally got it right and hopefully, this trend continues into the future. But, that’s not all, in order to change the culture that the Grammy’s created, these artists need to win when it’s rightfully deserved.