In a video that has emerged, Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of The Recording Academy, which is responsible for the Grammys, explains how a Grammy nomination comes about on the one hand, but also how the winners are determined. In a Sept. 27, 2022 tweet, Mason Jr. appears to be seen at a dinner party said to have been held in Accra, the capital of Ghana. He has been CEO of the Academy since 2021 and previously worked as a music producer.
The video is not only exciting because a Grammy is the most prestigious music award in the world, but because some people were not satisfied this year, especially in the area of rap nominations. The CEO explained the process of nominations as follows: “First of all, we have to understand that you can only win if the members of the academy vote for you. To become a member of the Academy, you have to be in the music industry in the United States.” He briefly noted that hopefully in the future there will be members from all over the world, but that is not the case at the moment. After that, he explained: When the music is submitted, each member listens to the music and ranks it for quality. The decisive factor here is “not the sales figures, not the streams, not the number of fans, not the number of followers, but purely the opinion. And that’s very difficult, as you all know, because it’s subjective.” The decision as to who gets a Grammy is based simply on “the opinion of the members in that particular year.” “There’s no committee. There are no journalists. There are no labels. It’s music professionals who vote for their peers,” he continues.
iCONs gather here this is what Laycon is going to be doing being a member of the recoding academy !!! It’s a big deal for NIGERIA for Laycon to be part of this @RecordingAcad CEO, Harvey Mason Jr had this to say at a private dinner with some industry stakeholders in Accra??. pic.twitter.com/F2DDzjHnP0
— Egbon Biöbä•k’anbai™ ? (@Duke_kanbai_) September 27, 2022
The rap nominations of the 2023 Grammys
Ahead of the upcoming Grammy Awards, there were two stars who complained, namely Denzel Curry and Nicki Minaj. The former complained about the Best Rap Album category, in which Kendrick Lamar, Pusha T, Future, Jack Harlow and DJ Khaled were nominated. In one of several tweets he wrote: “My album [ MELT MY EYEZ SEE YOUR FUTURE] was literally level with one of the albums that was nominated for a Grammy, and I still got it [einer Nominierung] deprived. All my homies who came out with solid, top notch albums this year got robbed.” “They don’t care about the culture. They’re only interested in building the big ones,” he wrote in one other tweet. He added in one another tweet added: “I can name ten albums that were better, congratulations to kdot [Kendrick Lamar] and push [Pusha T]but everyone else… come on.” In a subsequent one tweet he names artists like: JID, Smino, Freddi Gibbs, Redveil, Joey Bada$$, Kenny Mason and Saba (in another tweet) than people he would have nominated.
For Nicki Minaj, it was about getting her song “Super Freaky Girl” taken out of the “rap” category. In fact, they would have been fine with Latto’s song “Big Energy,” which is currently in the Best Melody Rap Performance category, getting the same treatment. “I have no problem with being taken out of the RAP category as long as we are ALL treated FAIRLY,” she wrote in one tweet.