Well this, this is a RICH. 

The big news in entertainment today is the Grammy nominations. I posted some quick thoughts about it earlier, specifically focusing on the biggest snub of the year: The Weeknd’s album, After Hours, and all of its hits – there are several of them, and they don’t even include my favourite song on the album, “Hardest To Love” – completely shut out. Industry analysts are all over it right now, with almost every outlet covering the story… because it IS a big story. And many are pointing to the Recording Academy’s confusing and marginalising categorisation issues for how this played out. These categorisation issues almost always penalise artists of colour. 

 

Oh but you know who now is putting his hand up with his own categorisation issues? That would be Justin Bieber: 

Welp, the timing of this. He’s already getting roasted on Twitter for it. Because, really, apart from the Beliebers, is album Changes and his song “Yummy” didn’t do much this year. The music he’s released in the second half of the year is probably making more of an impact. Still, JB received several nominations in the pop and country categories, and I guess he’s confused about it because he made an R&B album and the fact that the Recording Academy isn’t considering him for the category he expected. 

 

Here’s Kathleen checking JB for his whingeing: 

Right? 

The Weeknd can’t get into ANY category, and here’s JB with his four nominations all like, I’m not mad… I’m disappointed. And then there’s the irony of BIPOC artists never getting into the pop categories in the first place. Drake, for example, has been pretty critical of the Recording Academy for constantly boxing him into rap and R&B when he makes popular music. Who, after all, is more popular than Drizzy?!

Same goes for Beyoncé who, as I mentioned in my earlier post, is mostly relegated to the R&B categories and rarely gets to play in the major categories even though she’s the major-est of them all and they need her majorness on their Grammys telecast because her performance level is the standard. 

The point is, if we’re talking about Grammy grievances, JB’s going to be in his seat for a while before we get to his case, if you can even call it a case. This is like being proposed to with a 2 karat diamond and asking why it’s not 3.