Grammys 2023

Why Wasn’t Your Favorite Rapper In The Grammys’ Hip-Hop Tribute? Questlove Has A Thorough Explanation

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At the Grammys last night (February 5), the Recording Academy paid tribute to 50 years of hip-hop history with a 10-minute, all-star performance from a number of the most important rappers ever. With anything of this sort that attempts to be all-encompassing, though, some people are bound to be upset. It’s impossible to include every rapper, and as for why some didn’t make the cut, Questlove, who put the whole thing together, offered a lengthy explanation.

He began by generally breaking it down on Twitter today, tweeting, “general ?s answered about last night: (some are asking if we are playing erasure games so uh….yeah I don’t play that so—in answering the questions of ‘why wasn’t dada there?) 1. already booked 2. declined our offer straight up 3. or a third option im not gonna get into.”

He then teased a bigger endeavor in this realm coming up: “or we made a decision to wait for the 2 hour August taping.”

After going into more depth, he addressed questions some Twitter users had. One person asked, “Why was there no representation of talent from the 2010’s,” and Questlove replied, “because they said ‘no’, or they walked out.” Another said, “I’m sure there were all types of circumstances, but Ice-T as the Only LA representative, in Staples Center, in Los Angeles… is WILD!! Great performance otherwise.” Questlove answered, “welp: I asked like 10 legends so….sometimes you gotta go with the one who wants you. again might not be your preference but most of hip hop has side gigs. Acting was the main issue. lotta movies being shot.”

Meanwhile, in an interview, he explained Will Smith’s absence specifically, saying, “They started shooting Bad Boys 4 this week, so he couldn’t make rehearsals. He wanted to do it.”

Find Questlove’s original thread below.

“general ?s answered about last night: (some are asking if we are playing erasure games so uh….yeah I don’t play that so—in answering the questions of ‘why wasn’t dada there?)

1. already booked
2. declined our offer straight up
3. or a third option im not gonna get into

or we made a decision to wait for the 2 hour August taping

—we decided to eschew those who passed away, & give flowers to the living —for starters I learned with VH1 Honors not all rappers are good MCs and bad karaoke is a danger slope. And WAY too many legends passed so someone’s estate was gonna be heated.

this went through a crazy evolution. all my suggestions were 20 min presentations with Breakbeats/Graf Legends/Dancers/DJ/Beatboxers—-you’ll be shocked how fast 25-40 secs goes by and you don’t even get the halfway mark of 1995l remember 1973 to 2023 was the goal

we were aware of playing our biases out (if it were me alone? idda just skewered to my teenyears). at one point I said ‘we should do ALL women!!’ —that idea didn’t get too …..far (we didnt have time to do a ‘Some Kind Of Monster’/Kumbya thing to make that a reality)

& this is NOT leading to a tired narrative that women don’t get along because there MORE concerns on the men side of things too (happiest moment seeing LL & Ice T just chillin—)—but yeah the most asked question was ‘who all gone be there?’ which is understandable.

we had a criteria we wanted to follow: alive? harmonizing? turntablism? fighting shape? NYC? LA? BAY? ATL? NAWLINS? HOUSTON? MIDWEST? born before 1960? born after 1995? Superlyrical? Stylistic? Original? generally known by at least 2 generations?

now granted they might not be your favorite (and there were 2 crucial 11th hour (more like 10 mins before taping) cancellations that mighta made it look like we were biased in our choices. but just understand we literally tried to SQUEEEEEEEZE everyone in.”

Chris Brown Apologized To Robert Glasper While Suggesting A Change That Could Make The Grammys Better

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Robert Glasper may not be a household name — something the producer has jokingly alluded to while promoting his own music — but he certainly gets his due from the recording industry establishment (i.e. those in the know). However, one of the artists he defeated in the category for Best R&B Album at last night’s Grammys wasn’t joking when he blew up at Glasper over the win.

Chris Brown, whose album Breezy was nominated against Glasper’s Black Radio III, threw a bit of a hissy fit on Instagram, wondering “who da f*ck is this?” and joking that he would “start playing the harmonica” to get recognition from the Recording Academy. (Truthfully, he’s lucky they’re still considering him at all after being basically persona non grata for upwards of a decade after assaulting Rihanna.)

Glasper acknowledged Brown’s meltdown, posting a graphic on his own Instagram that read “Who the f*ck is Robert Glasper?” “If y’all have questions, I have answers,” he captioned the post, smoothly highlighting his impressive resume which includes production for Kendrick Lamar, Mac Miller, and a who’s-who of Black music royalty in addition to composing the score for The Photograph starring Issa Rae.

Fans on Twitter seemed to align more with Glasper than with Brown’s outlook, censuring the more popular artist for not doing his research. Since then, he apparently has, as he sent Glasper a DM on Instagram apologizing for his outburst, according to a screenshot he shared on his Story.

“Congratulations my brother,” he wrote. “I would like to apologize if you took offense to my reaction at the Grammys.. you were not the Intended target and I know I came off really rude and mean. After doing my research I actually think your amazing.”

However, he didn’t stop there. While acknowledging how his tantrum came off, he recommended a change to the Grammys’ format which actually might make things better for R&B artists in the future. “THE ORGANIZATION ISNT DOING US BLACKS OUR DUE DILIGENCE,” he wrote. “YOU AND I SHOULD never be in the Same category… two totally different vibes and genres. So from one black man to another.. CONGRATULATIONS.. HOPE YOU ARE ABLE TO FEED YOUR FAMILY FOR LIFE.”

Interestingly enough, R&B has had a fraught history at the Grammys — after all, what Black genre hasn’t? From 2003 to 2011, it was split into separate categories, Best R&B Album and Best Contemporary R&B album, to allow for the differences in production between those albums styled after the genre’s roots and those with more hip-hop influence and electronic production. After the categories were re-merged, a Best Progressive R&B Album award was introduced in 2020. Glasper’s Dinner Party bandmate Terrace Martin was nominated in that category this year, although Steve Lacy’s Gemini Rights took the award.

For what it’s worth, pitting Brown’s much more pop-influenced album against a field that included more soulful entries like Mary J. Blige’s Good Morning Gorgeous, Lucky Daye’s Candydrip, and PJ Morton’s Watch the Sun does make it stick out like a sore thumb. Perhaps the Grammys could figure out another category for more uptempo, dance-centric R&B records in the future.

Doja Cat Debuted Her ‘First Tattoos’ At The 2023 Grammys And It Seems Legitimate This Time

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Doja Cat is in an experimental mood. Isn’t she always? Recently, she was a lightning rod for attention in Paris with outfits hinged on fake eyelashes and 30,000 Swarovski crystals. Doja attended the 2023 Grammys in Versace on Sunday, February 5, but she raised eyebrows with a tweet before the event.

“Got my first tattoos today,” she tweeted in the early hours of February 5.

Some fans might recall Doja Cat claiming she’d gotten her “first tattoo ever” on July 23, 2022. It was actually just a temporary tattoo. This time, though, the ink seems real.

One of Doja Cat’s Grammys looks came from KNWLS. She posed for various photos in the custom tarnished leather gown, and if you zoom in, you can see delicate tattoos of a cat holding a pitchfork and a spider. The tattoos were previously covered up by her Versace black latex elbow gloves.

Doja Cat was nominated five awards at the 2023 Grammys: Best Music Video (“Woman”), Best Pop Duo/Group Performance (“I Like You [A Happier Song]”), Best Pop Solo Performance (“Woman”), Best Rap Performance (“Vegas”), and Record Of The Year (“Woman”).

She didn’t emerge victorious in any category, unfortunately, but we’ll always have her Best Pop Duo/Group Performance acceptance speech for “Kiss Me More” from last year’s Grammys. Plus, more music is on the way.

“I know that I’ve done a lot of pink and soft things, a lot of pop and glittery sounds,” Doja told Variety as their latest cover star. “But for this next era, I’m going in a more masculine direction.”

She added, “I feel like we have enough pop-punk artists right now. And if there needs to be more, then let there be more, but I don’t think I’m the one to do it. I want to explore more of a raw, unfiltered, hardcore punk sort of thing. It’s just something that I’m doing for my own personal fun — getting some drummers and guitarists together. And I don’t even know if that’s gonna make it out there.”

Bad Bunny Fans Are Furious With The Grammys Over Their Closed-Captioning During His Speech And Performance

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Bad Bunny set the bar high for the 2023 Grammys by kickstarting the broadcast with performances of “Titi Me Pregunto” and “Despues De La Playa,” which had everyone at Crypto.com Arena attempting to merengue dance. But CBS’ closed-captioning dampened the otherwise awesome moment.

As Bad Bunny was reminding everyone why he’s the biggest artist on the planet right now, closed-captioning read, “[SINGING IN NON-ENGLISH].” The same thing happened when Bunny spoke in his native Spanish while accepting the award for Best Música Urbana Album (Un Verano Sin Ti).

The lack of inclusivity did not go over well.

“Seeing [SPEAKING IN NON-ENGLISH] in closed captions in 2023 is a great reminder that a lot of us can’t separate our accessibility from our culture, which is why those conversations need to be inclusive as all hell,” Adweek’s Shannon Miller tweeted.

Miller was joined by countless others in pointing out the disappointing misstep:

Bunny was also nominated for Album Of The Year, which controversially went to Harry Styles, and Best Pop Solo Performance (“Moscow Mule”). Despite losing out on those awards, it didn’t seem to dampen his mood at all based on how he posed for photos with Taylor Swift.

Watch Bad Bunny’s Best Música Urbana Album acceptance speech below.

Offset Denies Reports He Got Into A Fight With Quavo At The Grammys: ‘What TF I Look Like?’

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It appears that reports of Offset and Quavo fighting backstage at the Grammys may have been exaggerated. After the TMZ-reported rumor circulated online, Offset himself put in a rare appearance on Twitter to put paid to the speculation, tweeting, “What tf look like fighting my brother yal n****s is crazy.” Quavo, meanwhile, hasn’t made a comment yet.

However, he could just be doing damage control as Entertainment Tonight reports seeing camera phone footage from backstage yelling at someone off-camera, “Both of y’all wrong. This is not right.” While it’s unclear per ET who she’s talking to, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that she could have been addressing her husband and his cousin, who reportedly had to be separated after Quavo declined to allow Offset to join him onstage for his tribute to Takeoff during the ceremony.

The two have been on the outs since last year, when rumors of Migos breaking up hit social media after Offset unfollowed his bandmates on Instagram. Then, Quavo and Takeoff announced their joint album as Unc And Phew, while Offset announced what appeared to be a competing album, and reportedly took the trio’s label, Quality Control Music, to court over the rights to his solo music.

Quavo and Takeoff addressed the split in October, suggesting that the falling out was personal. “We stand on real deal loyalty, and sometimes that sh*t ain’t displayed,” Quavo said. “This ain’t got nothing to do with no label, no paperwork, no QC, nothing. This got something to do with the three brothers. And sh*t, it is what it is. Right now, we gon’ be the duo ’til time tell.”

Before the group could reconcile, though, Takeoff was shot dead in Houston at the start of November, and since then, both remaining Migos appeared to have been mourning separately. They haven’t been seen together except at Takeoff’s funeral.

The 2023 Grammys’ Efforts To Include Hip-Hop Look More Like Talk Than Action

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Well, I regret to report that the Grammys, despite staging a celebration of 50 years of hip-hop history (supposedly), still can’t seem to get hip-hop right despite all the ways the world makes it easy these days. And we’ll get to that performance in a minute, but first, let me dust off the drum I’ve been banging for the past six years to once again call out the rap establishment for either overlooking or downplaying the contributions and accomplishments of women in hip-hop for, well, the past 50 years.

From the obvious, like omitting Gangsta Boo from the In Memoriam segment to the subtle, like the vague respectability politics displayed by which female stars’ songs didn’t make it into the 10-minute-long tribute, the Recording Academy members’ biases were evident throughout the rap-focused portions of the ceremony.

Now, hip-hop doesn’t need and has never needed the Grammys’ approval or acknowledgment. But the Grammys have been striving for more relevance through engagement with hip-hop and to continue to do so on a purely surface level after all this time despite being called out repeatedly over the past decade isn’t going to get them there.

Make no mistake; that engagement is definitely surface-level. I’m not arguing that the Grammys should be honoring the most underground rappers… We don’t need Griselda menacing the crowd or a full slate of Memphis trap rappers dominating the nominations. But look, when one of the very pioneers of Memphis trap rap passes away a month before the ceremony, it makes very little sense for her name to be omitted from the In Memoriam segment (this isn’t the first time this has happened, either).

But let’s stick a pin in that thought because it’s going to tie into some of my points about the 50 Years of Hip-Hop tribute performance. Judging from that performance, the Grammys have also taken what feels like a reductive outlook on hip-hop in general. Check out the list of songs that supposedly represent 50 years of hip-hop history.

It looks a lot more like something that would have been done in 2003 than in 2023, doesn’t it? How else can you explain that 15 of the 23 songs were from before the year 2000 and only six of those were from between 1990 and 2000? The jump from The Lox to Lil Baby was called jarring on Twitter but even more than that, it belies the Grammys’ commitment to honoring younger, more diverse artists.

Sure, the logistics of pulling together something like that performance are likely Herculean, but do you truly mean to tell me that Soulja Boy was doing something more important than the Grammys on Sunday night? What about Chief Keef? Future was in the room, awaiting his eventual disappointment as the rightful Rap Album Of The Year winner, they couldn’t ask him to do “Turn On The Lights” or “March Madness?”

I could expend at least a couple more paragraphs on just the missing 2010s. It appears the Grammys’ current contingent of hip-hop representatives – to be sure, a crowd of Gen-Xers who all remember “Rapper’s Delight” coming on the radio in 1979 but who couldn’t name a recent Young Thug song to save their lives – are more than content to let that decade fall by the wayside while paying lip service to the last year or so of contemporary hits.

I certainly understand the compulsion, I really do. For literal decades, not just one, but two generations who grew up on rap watched those old-school pioneers of the ‘80s get overlooked or ignored – hello, the first untelevised Rap Grammy in 1989 – so it makes sense they’d want to give themselves these flowers now.

But they shouldn’t come at the cost of throwing their successors under the bus. That only starts a cycle that is self-destructive and counterintuitive – although it is also, to be fair, instructive of the way the Grammys works in the first place (see: Bonnie Raitt winning Song of the Year for a song literally no one listened to). And it’s a modus operandi that first and second-generation hip-hop stars have been employing for far too long, dumping on ‘90s and 2000s kids because they don’t like the greater emphasis on melody and trap aesthetics.

It’s also telling that the only women included were the upright-seeming, “wholesome” ones. Salt-N-Pepa may have been sex-forward and unapologetic for their time, but compared to Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, they are downright tame. Queen Latifah and Missy Elliott – who are among my personal favorites, and are indisputable legends – are also the most often pitted against contemporary faves like Nicki Minaj as the role models for girls to look up to.

Even Lil Kim and Foxy Brown, largely credited as the godmothers of modern “pussy rap” – the subgenre of hip-hop that women are mostly allowed to dominate – were absent from the celebration, giving the impression that the history of hip-hop is being sanitized as the disruptors of yesteryear age into the conservative parental figures youth movements are designed to rebel against.

Rap music is the most popular genre in the world. Hip-hop culture has permeated every corner of the globe. It’s done so largely by the efforts of the members of the Recording Academy who helped push rap forward. But now that they’ve done so, they seem intent on holding it back.

From predictably awarding Kendrick Lamar Rap Album Of The Year, seemingly for breaking with the conventions of the genre rather than embracing them, to overlooking so many contemporary rap heroes to trying to shrink and demean women in hip-hop, it seems the Recording Academy has had a bad influence on its rap delegation. They seem to be trying to conform rather than shake things up – and that’s not hip-hop.

No institution can ever be perfect or get everything right, but it’s clear that whatever measures the Grammys have supposedly taken to balance things out aren’t working. Perhaps more transparency is needed – I’d love to see how the ranked voting results are actually shaking out, personally – or maybe more expansion and a larger youth contingent are needed to ensure that more options appear on the ballot. One way or another, the Grammys have to do better, or else why even bother with hip-hop honors in the first place?

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Jay-Z Isn’t Sweating Beyoncé Losing Album Of The Year Because ‘It’s Just A Marketing Thing’

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Last night, fans were stunned when the Grammys announced the Album Of The Year winner. While many expected that the win would go to Beyoncé for her groundbreaking album Renaissance, the award was instead given to Harry Styles for Harry’s House. Twitter erupted with fury, with many calling it an outright robbery, but there’s one person who’s not sweating it — arguably the second most invested party, Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z.

In an interview with Tidal (a friendly outlet if there ever was one) ahead of the ceremony, Jay explained that he takes a different perspective on the importance of the award show, rather than getting his hopes up. “I remove myself from the process and hope they just get it right,” he said. “It got to the point where I was like, it’s just a marketing thing. You go, you got an album out and it could help the sales go up.”

Jay also explained why he thought Renaissance deserved the award, while admitting his bias. “Look what it’s done to the culture,” he observed. “Look how the energy of the world moved. They play her whole album in the club. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that. The whole entire joint — like, everything?! Every remix is amazing. Everyone’s inspired. It has inspired the world. Every remix is better than the other one. From anybody, we’re just finding these joints out in the street… It’s inspiring creativity. You know how The Black Album had The Grey Album [Danger Mouse’s 2004 mashup project]? And the one with Radiohead? It was called Jaydiohead [Minty Fresh Beats’ 2009 mashup]. When it just inspires creativity, that’s an album. That has to be Album Of The Year. It has to be.”

Unfortunately, it seems the Recording Academy, by and large, disagreed (for what it’s worth, most of them are way too old for “the club” by now, right?). We’ll see how it does affect Beyoncé’s (and Styles’) sales in the future or their award show strategies, but with her world tour in front of her, Beyoncé has bigger fish to fry.

Beyoncé Should Have Won The Grammy For Album Of The Year And It’s Infuriating That She Didn’t

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Let’s not waste time, here: the Grammys let us all down by failing to acknowledge Beyoncé’s Renaissance as the Album Of The Year, in favor of the audio equivalent of plain oatmeal. I’m sure Harry Styles is a very nice British boy – distinctive lack of personality aside – but I, and indeed, many, many others fail to see what his album accomplished that Beyoncé’s did not.

Where Styles’ album was a fine example of a middle-of-the-road pop album, taking inspiration from the past 40 years or so of Top 40 radio (I’m putting it nicely – others have argued that it was pale imitation), Renaissance excavated 40 years of Black music history. Beyoncé sought to shine a spotlight on an oft-and-long-overlooked subculture of Black joy and rebellion.

And while the Grammys were certainly happy to make a fuss about her setting the record for most-awarded act ever, shutting her out from Album Of The Year – again – felt like a repudiation, a rejection, of not just Beyoncé’s efforts, but of the validity of the lived experience of the people her album highlighted. It’s a slap in the face.

To add insult to injury, these are the people and this is the scene that has most directly influenced pop music over the past 40 years. All of your faves? They got their swag from queer Black folks. If you ask just about any dance-pop star with a Billboard Hot 100 hit who they were inspired by, you’re going to get the same answers: Britney Spears, Madonna. Well, who inspired Madonna? I’ll wait.

Actually, no I won’t. It was that New York rave culture, where queer Black folks pioneered house and techno, ball culture, and the sampling techniques that permeate modern music today. Look at Sam Smith and Kim Petras winning Best Pop Duo/Group Performance last night. That doesn’t happen without the queer Black community opening the door, at the roots of things, laying the foundation for the branches to flourish.

And Beyoncé, who brought that underground movement to the daylight, went out of her way to acknowledge those contributors to the culture. She put Grace Jones on the album. She nodded to the dozens of collaborators and inspirations for that album in both the liner notes and on her website. As my colleague, Alex Gonzalez, pointed out on Twitter, “Both Harry and Beyoncé noticeably took inspiration from LGBTQ+ aesthetics and culture for their respective album eras… but only one of them actually thanked the queer community.”

And musically, she embraced the breadth and range of those contributions, from disco to neo-soul and everything in between. She displayed versatility and depth and grace and vulnerability and gratitude. She, to quote the kids (who are, again, only quoting Black drag queens), ate and left no crumbs.

In the end, she was paid dust.

Harry’s acceptance speech, oddly enough, inadvertently highlighted just how insultingly tone-deaf this pick really was. “This never happens to people like me,” he said. People like who, Harry? British people? Paul McCartney, Sting, and Adele all have several. Guys who were hand-picked and groomed by some of the biggest producers on the planet to be pop stars from their teens? Hey, have you ever heard of Justin Timberlake?

There is literally no category or tag that you could place on Harry Styles that would put him at a disadvantage in today’s society, let alone at an institution like the Recording Academy, which has had a 100-year history of dropping the ball on honoring Black artists, women, queer artists, or people of color in general at best, and outright racism at worst. Harry is, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, a straight, white, rich dude… the people modern society is set up to serve.

You can’t even blame this on the voting process; in a Variety feature about Academy voters, two anonymous members of this “prestigious” group openly admitted they didn’t vote for Beyoncé “because she always wins.” There was true spite behind this robbery, like the heist in Ocean’s Eleven. It wasn’t just about seeing Harry win – it was about seeing Beyoncé, a Black woman whose commitment to excellence in her craft oozes out of every fiber of her being, who has sacrificed so much to be the best at her craft, who shouldered the burden of representing an entire community in her work… lose.

That is truly heinous.

But, it’s also business as usual in America, where we Black folks are told we have to work twice as hard for half as much. If nothing else, last night’s Grammy result adds one more exhibit to the mountainous pile of evidence for this. It’s all just proof that the Grammys, like most everything else, ain’t really for us – and that’s a shame, because America, and its music, owe us so much.

The Biggest Winners, Losers, And Surprises Of The 2023 Grammys

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The Grammys: They sure are long! Shout out to my fellow East Coasters who watched the 2023 Grammys until midnight yesterday and got 45 quality minutes of sleep before getting ready for work this morning.

Within all the length of last night’s show, a lot of things happened. Some awards went to their expected recipients, others went to nominees viewers probably forgot were even up for consideration. Some artists put on spectacular performances, others were certainly at least on stage performing music. Some people got their flowers, others would have settled for just a glimpse of a dried-out petal.

With the dust settling now, all of these events can be generally placed into three categories: winners, losers, and surprises. In fact, the highlights of these goings-on have been categorized thusly… by me… below.

Winner: Beyoncé

Beyoncé took a slight L when she got stuck in traffic and consequently showed up late to the Grammys. That was profoundly overshadowed, though, by one of the biggest moments of Bey’s career: Renaissance won the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Music Album. In a vacuum, that’s kind of neat, but zoom out: That Grammy was the 32nd of Beyoncé’s career, which is the new all-time Grammy record. The ever-composed Beyoncé was clearly emotional while accepting the award, which goes to show how major the win was not just in music history, but to her personally.

Surprise: Bonnie Raitt/Samara Joy

Beyoncé’s big win wasn’t a shock. You know what was, though? Half of the Grammys in the “big four” categories.

The Best New Artist field was strong and the winner ended up being Samara Joy, a jazz singer who’s a relative unknown when compared to competitors like Anitta, Latto, and Wet Leg.

Then came Song Of The Year.

Up for consideration were songs by Adele, Beyoncé, Bonnie Raitt, DJ Khaled, Gayle, Harry Styles, Kendrick Lamar, Lizzo, Steve Lacy, and Taylor Swift. Looking at that list, clearly, there’s one artist that stands out, and not favorably in terms of contemporary acclaim and pop culture relevance: Raitt. Just like that, though, “Just Like That” won.

Raitt is a legend and a Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductee, but even she was left scratching her head: When her name was called, she gave an open-mouthed look around the room like she just won $100K on a gas station scratcher. That was a fair reaction: “Just Like That” currently has under half a million streams on Spotify. Last year, around 9.5 million people watched the Grammys. So, if those numbers remain similar for this year’s broadcast, that means about 20 times as many people watched “Just Like That” win the award than had actually heard the song before (and that’s being generous by assuming every Spotify listener has only played the song one time).

The Grammys aren’t supposed to be a popularity contest, but cultural relevance should have been a bigger consideration here.

Loser: In Memoriam segment

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Every year, the Recording Academy honors esteemed deceased musicians with its In Memoriam portion of the show. Also every year, they find a way to piss people off. Fans were quick to notice that artists like Gangsta Boo and Aaron Carter weren’t mentioned during the broadcast, which rubbed some viewers the wrong way.

To the Recording Academy’s credit, in a post shared ahead of the show, they shared an In Memoriam list featuring more names than made it onto the broadcast, noting that “some” of them would be included in the video tribute. Carter was on that list, but not the broadcast. They also note that the people on the list all died between January 1, 2022 and December 6, 2022; Boo died on January 1, 2023.

So, the Recording Academy technically has some plausible deniability here, but maybe policies that exclude people who should obviously be named could use some reconsidering.

Winner: Wet Leg

Previously, leg was dry. At the Grammys, though, leg was wet: Emerging rock favorites Wet Leg was up for five awards and they took home two of them: Best Alternative Music Performance for “Chaise Longue” and Best Alternative Music Album for Wet Leg.

Winner: Harry Styles, studio musician

Harry was one of the evening’s most-nominated artist with seven total nods. He ended the night with a strong winning percentage, too, taking home three awards, most notably picking up Album Of The Year for Harry’s House. That said…

Loser: Harry Styles, live performer

…boy was his performance during the show dull and weird.

He started his rendition of “As It Was” with some backing dancers, all spinning slowly on a rotating platform, like the song’s music video. It was an extremely low-energy environment for a minute or so, all while the relentlessly upbeat song charged on in defiant tonal contrast. It looked as though Styles and company had the stage set up to perform an Adele ballad before switching to “As It Was” seconds before going on. Things didn’t really improve after the intro, either. Styles’ current tour has obviously gone well, as the banner he has hanging in Madison Square Garden indicates, but the watermelon sugar high appears to have worn off since his last arena show.

Winner: Viola Davis

Congratulations are in order for Viola Davis: She e-got her EGOT! She’s now one of only 18 people to ever do it and it’s thanks in part to last night’s win in the Best Audio Book, Narration, And Storytelling Recording category, for her Finding Me memoir.

Winner: Kendrick Lamar

Beyoncé was the evening’s leading nominee with nine total nods, but Lamar was right behind her with eight of his own. Despite getting shut out of the main categories, Lamar did well in the hip-hop categories, winning in Best Rap Performance (“The Heart Part 5”), Best Rap Song (“The Heart Part 5”), and Best Rap Album (Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers). Furthermore, he did it all while dressed like Goodwill Kid, M.A.A.D. City.

Surprise: Muni Long

In the Best R&B Song category, Beyoncé came out on top with “Cuff It.” Another Renaissance track, “Virgo’s Groove,” was up for Best R&B Performance, and while that may have felt like an obvious pick there, Muni Long actually pulled off the upset with “Hrs & Hrs.”

That’s not to say, of course, that Long’s win (her first Grammy victory) is inexcusable. “Hrs & Hrs” is an accomplished track, as it was only the second song by an independent artist to top the Billboard Hot R&B Songs chart, it’s certified platinum, and it achieved a No. 16 peak on the Hot 100. Beating Beyoncé for a Grammy is a tall mountain to scale, so congrats to Long!

Winner: 50th Anniversary Of Hip-Hop Tribute Performance

The Recording Academy put a major focus on honoring hip-hop in 2023, since this year marks the half-century anniversary of the genre’s inception. They went all out with a gargantuan 10-minute performance that spanned eras, featuring stage time from Grandmaster Flash, Rakim, RUN-DMC, Salt-N-Pepa, Future, GloRilla, Lil Baby, Busta Rhymes, De La Soul, Missy Elliott, Method Man, Nelly, and Too Short, among others. If you’re looking for a hip-hop history lesson, the setlist is a terrific starting point.

Surprise: Brandi Carlile

To her name, Brandi Carlile has racked up 24 Grammy nominations in her lifetime. She’s usually firmly in the Americana and country categories, but this year, she earned her first rock nominations. She actually dominated on that front, with “Broken Horses” winning Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance. While on the surface, Carlile getting rock Grammys might read as off, she performed the track during the broadcast and it was very clearly a rock song, and a pretty good one, too.

Loser: “God Did”

Last night, a lot of songs did, but “God Did” was not among them. The DJ Khaled, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, John Legend, and Fridayy song was nominated for Song Of The Year, Best Rap Performance, and Best Rap Song. It won none of those awards.

Then, Khaled and company had to close the show with a performance of the song, which featured Khaled spouting his classic substance-free motivational nuggets. His loud claims of “we the best” or whatever while actual musicians were performing around him fell especially flat, since the Recording Academy just finished declaring on national television that he is in fact not the best.

Loser: Benny Blanco

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Benny Blanco wore that to the 2023 Grammy Awards.

Find the full list of this year’s Grammy nominees and winners here.

Quavo And Offset Reportedly Got Into A Fight Backstage At The Grammys Over The Tribute For Takeoff

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No one knows the reason behind the dispute that split Migos, but it doesn’t appear that Takeoff’s death has made Quavo and Offset ready to settle it yet. According to TMZ, it actually escalated last night at the Grammys, where the two men were involved in an altercation backstage and had to be separated when Quavo refused to allow Offset to participate in his tribute to their fallen bandmate.

Meanwhile, according to TMZ’s sources, it was not Offset who started the fight, which makes sense considering the comments Quavo and Takeoff made over the past year regarding his falling out with the group. While Quavo and Takeoff spoke about “disloyalty,” it seemed that Offset had angered them in some way, leading to their making a joint album without him. Fans have speculated that it was Offset suing their label, Quality Control Music, that set things off; others believe that there was a romantic tryst between Offset and Saweetie, who was previously dating Quavo.

Whatever the reason, many fans were disappointed that the two remaining Migos were unable to reconcile their differences for the tribute. However, it looks like the tribute provided another wedge between them, making a Migos reunion less likely than ever.