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The Grammy's on Hip Hop
Article by:
Charles Vanegas
 The Grammy's are the most prestigious awards a music artist can receive. Legends like Michael Jackson, Carlos Santana and Bruce Springsteen are multiple winners. In 1988, The Recording Academy finally recognized rap as music, and awarded D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince “Best Rap Performance” for Parents Just Don't Understand. For the next few years, they added more hip hop categories like “Best Rap Album” and “Best Rap Song by a Duo or Group”, to make it more fair, compared to other genres like pop and rock.
They weren’t and still aren't judged correctly. In 1995, the first Best Rap Album was awarded to Naughty By Nature's Poverty's Paradise. This was not their best album, but was still a quality album, so I'm not going to hate. The second year The Fugees won with The Score. I'm not even going to lie; The Fugees are legends and deserved it. Here's where it goes downhill. In 1997 P. Diddy won with No Way Out. The album was all right. A few good tracks like "Missing You", "Victory" and "All About the Benjamin’s" were featured, but the album did not deserve the award. Diddy does not write his own rhymes. I got no love for someone who relies on ghostwriters. Many of the tracks were only kept afloat with Biggie's rhymes. Biggie's classic "Life Atfer Death" was clearly the best album. Hypnotize, Fuck You Tonight, What's Beef, Notorious Thugs, Going Back To Cali, Ten Crack Commandments, Nasty Boy, Mo Money Mo Problems, Long Kiss Goodnight, You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You). Holy Freakin Crap. How does that not win you a Grammy? Like honestly, what do you need to do to win? I'm going to stop before I go nuts.
The 42nd (Slim Shady LP), 44th (Stankonia), 45th (The Eminem Show), and 47th (College Dropout) Annual Grammy winners almost won by default, because most of the other nominees were so undeserving. Nelly is nominated so much it is disturbing. All in all, it is evident that the Grammy's also love big MTV favorites Missy Elliot, Nelly, Outkast, Jay Z, 50 Cent, Kanye West and Eminem, and nominates them for anything they possibly can. 50 Cent's "The Massacre" and Eminem's "Encore" are some of the worst albums released in recent memory and definitely by these artists. How are "Encore" and "The Massacre" nominated, and "The Documentary" and "Street's Disciple" not? Eminem is one of my favorite rappers, but the album was straight garbage. I'm not a huge 50 Cent fan, but I'll admit that I thought Get Rich Or Die Tryin' was pretty ill. The Massacre was just awful.
It's obvious the Grammy's don't know what they're doing when it comes to rap. They don't listen to the albums/songs they're nominating. That's why they only nominate the singles, instead of the quality songs within the albums. Jamie Foxx, Usher and Beyonce are all nominated for non-singles featured on the Luther Vandross tribute album “So Amazing”. The same thing happened with the Ray Charles tribute last year. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with these nominations, but how come they don’t take the time to listen to all the songs on rap albums?
Another thing that bothers me: Rap is rarely nominated, almost never wins awards outside the rap categories. Last year, Kanye West was nominated 8 times, but only won for Best Rap album, Best Rap Song and for his production on Alicia Keys album. You could say that Outkast was nominated 6 times in 2003 and won 3, and you’d be right. But a big chunk of the album was Andre 3000 singing. “Hey Ya” was the big hit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the voters listened to anything more than that song.
Some may disagree with this statement, but in my opinion, the best 3 rappers of all time are 2Pac, Nas and Biggie. Their combined Grammy wins: Zero. Will Smith has 4, Nelly has 3, Eminem has 9, Jay-Z has 4, and P. Diddy has 2. MTV favorites reign supreme. Don't get me wrong, I have mad respect for Jay Z, but most of his wins are collaboration songs designed for the pop charts. I also have much respect for Eminem, I'm just pointing out that he has obvious favoritism compared to other greats.
When they started giving awards to hip-hop, they said it was because they were now starting to recognize hip-hop as music. But it seems that they only recognize the hip-hop shown on MTV, and that sells 5 million copies. Once again, Grammy nominations have been announced, leaving Nas off the list, for the simple reason “Street’s Disciple” does not include songs you can shake your ass to. So on February 8th, when the 48th Grammy’s are awarded, take time to wonder what they’re really awarding.
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