The Grammys Doesn't Give a F@!ck About Black Artists

The Grammys has long stood as the pinnacle achievement for music artist in America. Some of the world's greatest artist have graced the stage of the Grammys. So, it's no wonder that it is the biggest night in music history, that is, until it began to snub those artists who are more deserving in favor of those who are usually white and male. Shocker! In my opinion, the Grammys has a long standing history for awarding artists who represent pop culture rather than those who have created a high quality body of work that transcends the mainstream platforms.

This year, everyone was hoping the Grammys would finally get it together. Especially, after Beyoncé was snubbed for Album of the Year Award for her iconic Lemonade album. Don't get me wrong, I love Adele, honestly, truly, but her body of work did not compare to the content that Beyoncé produced. It seemed like the Grammys were once again looking over Black artists in favor of their White counterparts whose artistic body of work doesn't even compare. This wasn’t the first time something like this happened but we were hoping it would be the last.

This year's nominations were the most diverse we had ever seen them in a long time, with Black and Female artists dominating most of the major categories. It was looking like we were finally making progress. Little did we all know, those diverse nominations were just wolves hiding in sheep's clothing. Bruno Mars was the all-star that night, walking away with many top awards including Album of the Year (cue eye-roll here). Only one woman won an award in the top categories and she was Alessia Cara. She walked away with Best New Artist even though she had her first debut album about three years ago. Knowing the history of the Grammys I shouldn’t have been so surprised but for the life of me I could not understand why.

In the words of Ms. Tyra Banks, “We were rooting for you! We were all rooting for you! Take something and learn from this!” The Grammys really had us all fooled. They had us believing that finally they were going to do the right thing and award an artist whose body of work demonstrated strong creativity, whose message was powerful and transcended genre, race, and culture. An artist who wasn’t concerned about what was popular, but rather focused on content with substance. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like Bruno Mars. His music is very catchy. You might even catch me doing a little bop when one of his songs come on, but to award him with Album of the Year is out of order.

After all the events that have occurred this year, the women coming forward about sexual assault, the #metoo and #timesup movement, apparently the Grammy Award committee wasn’t phased by any of that and they made that apparently clear. Now, while all this is disappointing, it begs the question why should we think the Grammys would offer us anything else? For years, Black and female artists have not gained the recognition that they properly deserved and yet every year we hope for better.

I do believe there is always room for improvement and room for change but if an entity continues to shit on you year after year, why go back? Why allow a system that refuses to acknowledge certain groups artistry to dictate or measure your worth? At this point we should not hold these awards in such high esteem especially because they don’t regard us in that same fashion.

As much as we want for the Grammys to get it together and to be more inclusive rather than to perpetuate the systems of oppression and social bias, we can’t force that upon them. We can, however, choose what we do. We don’t need for others to validate our talents. Instead we should choose to simple leave the Grammys right where they're at as we continue to preserve forward.