Complicated feelings about an important celebration
The 2023 Grammys were a mishmash of the heartfelt (Kim Petras giving the late, pioneering SOPHIE their flowers), the predictable (“Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers” winning Rap Album of the Year), and the shocking (Bonnie Rait!). However, the singular moment that towers over the flashiest of Harry Styles’ fits was the celebration of hip-hop’s fiftieth anniversary by a bevy of the genre’s legends.
The approximately fifteen-minute amalgam of hip-hop old and new was crafted perfectly for my oldhead sensibilities. It’s hard not to be enthralled by Jay-Z geeking out over “Method Man,” or stunned by Queen Latifah’s virtuosity and commanding stage Fifty years of hip-hop at the Grammys michael smith › blsa voice, arts & culture editor Complicated feelings about an important celebration presence. It’s hard not to cheer when Posdunous raps in front of a 3 Feet High and Rising themed backdrop months after it was announced that De La Soul’s catalogue would be made available on streaming platforms. Nor can one remain stone-faced when Run-DMC performs “King of Rock” in front of a Jam Master Jay banner, or when Scarface raps his “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” verse months after a number of health scares. Even the relative newcomers Lil Baby, GloRilla, and Lil Uzi Vert cement their places in hiphop’s canon with their energetic performances. All in all, it was a genuinely pleasant surprise amidst a relatively standard-fare award ceremony.
Joe Coscarelli of the New York Times called the tribute an “elaborate mea culpa to rap music.” Though this framing gestures to the fraught and contentious relationship between the Recording Academy and the genre, it obscures the virulent anti-Blackness upon which this institution continues to operate. It is truly hard to reconcile that this “mea culpa” features a number of artists who have either never won a Grammy, or have solely won awards in rap-specific categories. For instance, neither Busta Rhymes nor Public Enemy won Grammys during their respective primes. The Lox, riding the high of their unequivocal vanquishing of Dipset in their 2021 Verzuz matchup, performed ”We Gonna Make It” (“Ja-da-MWAH!!”) during the ceremony.
Despite being a monumental force in New York hip-hop with widespread acclaim, they received their sole Grammy nomination in 2021 simply for appearing on Kanye West’s Donda. Despite the prominent placements of Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa, and Missy Elliott in the tribute, the spectre of misogynoir in the Recording Academy’s operation specifically looms large. The preceding ceremony featured a renaming of the Global Impact Award after Dr. Dre, sanitizing the West Coast rapper/producer’s history of domestic violence. The “In Memoriam” portion of the broadcast excluded Gangsta Boo, a singular force in the Memphis rap scene who unilaterally expanded the bounds of what a woman in hip-hop was capable of. Finally, in spite of Beyoncé becoming the most decorated artist in Grammy history, Renaissance was snubbed for the most prestigious of awards, Album of the Year. In doing so, the Recording Academy continued its yearly tradition of preferring the mundane to the extraordinary. Since the award’s inception, only three Black women (Natalie King Cole, Whitney Houston, and Lauryn Hill) have seen their bodies of work receive this form of acclaim. As noted by Craig Jenkins of Vulture and New York Magazine, “periodic comets cross the solar system faster than the Grammys give Black women top honors.”
This context unmistakably informs my adherence to the “I never let a statue tell me how nice I am” school of thought. My love for rap and the multitudes that the genre contains stems directly from its willingness to eschew mainstream approval in favour of novel sounds and unvarnished, pointed commentary. Despite its crossover appeal, its validation has always come from within; a truth instructive in my own socialization as a Black man. Despite my principled rejection of the Grammys and what it represents, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to spending the following days asking a number of unanswerable questions (where was André 3000? No G-Unit? Why was LL Cool J wearing an all leather fit?). After a year filled with incalculable loss within the rap community, perhaps it simply felt nice to see my superheroes get their flowers while they are still here.
