“You got robbed. I wanted you to win. You should have. It’s weird, and it sucks that I robbed you.” These words were spoken by Macklemore in 2014 after winning the award for best new artist. Besides him and Kendrick, the other nominations were James Blake, Ed Sheeran, and Kasey Musgraves. Now it’s not a secret, we all at home as well as his peers felt that Kendrick Lamar was robbed of the award, but it did not stop there.

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis won best rap performance and best rap song with their hit song, “Thrift Shop”, and best rap album with “The Heist”. Now if you’re a Macklemore fan, more power to you, but The Heist won over albums like Nothing Was The Same by Drake, Good Kid, M.A.A.D City with Kendrick, Magna Carter Holy Grail by Jay-Z, and Yeezus by Kanye.

After 2014, I believe people really began to raise their eyebrows when thinking about the credibility of The Grammys and their ability to pick artists that really deserve the awards and recognition. But this is just 2014. It didn’t happen again, right?

Let’s fast forward now to 2019. Cardi B has just won the award for best rap album with “Invasion of Privacy”. Now again people are angry because while I’m sure many like Cardi, the people she won over felt more deserving of the award. Astroworld with Travis Scott, Pusha T’s Daytona, Nipsey Hussel’s Victory Lap, and Mac Miller’s Swimming were all runner-ups.

Now, let’s compare some numbers real quick. Astroworld sold 537,000 album-equivalent units with 270,000 of them being pure sales, not bad. Invasion of Privacy however had 255,000 album-equivalent sales with 103,000 pure sales.

Numbers do not lie. I’m not saying Astroworld should have won outright, but if it sold more and was also number one four weeks after its debut, then why did Invasion of Privacy win the award? To be fair, let’s not forget it did go number one on its debut, but in the long run, it did not beat Astroworld in total sales. There is a fact that I believe helped this album win the award. Cardi had two songs on the Billboard Hot 100 that hit number one: “Bodak Yellow” and “I Like It.” As well as being the first female rapper to earn several chart-toppers.

It’s a great achievement, and while personally, I don’t like her music, I do like her success. But this is about the best album, not about singles, and it is a groundbreaking achievement that I think she should win in a separate category.

Last but not least, I want to go over 2020’s Grammy and what Tyler, the Creator said about his album being considered a “rap” album and what urban means to him. If you never saw it, now is your chance, just click here.

Basically, to summarize, Tyler states that he’s happy that his work was acknowledged, but the grim reality is that whenever someone like him (a black man/woman) does anything, they are immediately put into a rap/urban category. What caught me was when he stated that he feels the word “urban” is just another way of saying the N-word. He won the best rap album that year with his fifth studio album, “IGOR”. Now depending on how you see it, yes he does have features like Kanye, Lil Uzi Vert, and Playboi Carti on the album, guys who are definitely rappers. But Tyler is more than just a rapper. Most of the songs are not him rapping over a beat and using cool rhymes. That’s not all rap is, and quite frankly rap comes in many varieties but what I am saying is IGOR felt like it was more than that.

That’s not even including the other nominees, guys like Nas or Freddie Gibbs were also nominated too.

The crazy thing is, there is so much more that can be talked about and exposed when talking about the Grammys. How in March of 2021, we saw The Weeknd get snubbed entirely after giving the world, “After Hours,” which is unanimously known as one of his best albums. Or when Drake went on stage in 2019, and when he openly talked about issues he had with the award ceremony, the mic cut off. Who can forget the Kamikaze interview with Eminem?!

So now here we are, Grammys are coming soon, and the nominations just came out not too long ago. Will there be a big snub this year? Will people truly be satisfied with the results? Or will something entirely different happen? Only time will tell.