Hip-hop superstar Megan Thee Stallion was in a great mood on Grammy night after winning three trophies and stealing the show with her “WAP” and “Savage” performances. The celebration included her boyfriend, New York rapper Pardison Fontaine, as they recreated a video of their argument that had gone viral recently. Pardison Fontaine Makes Light Of […]
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Instead of responding to John Oliver calling him a “performatively outraged wedge salad,” Tucker Carlson returned to one of his favorite subjects during Monday’s episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight: “WAP” (it does not stand for “white angry pundit”). He’s just concerned for the children! Carlson first covered the Billboard-topping Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion single back in August, calling it “garbage” and “crap,” but he railed against it again following the Grammys. This time, he tied it back to “cancel culture.”
After showing a clip from the Grammys performance, Carlson sneered, “No more Dumbo. It’s too filthy. We get that instead.” (I’m not sure the issue with Dumbo is that it’s “filthy”…) After bring in Candace Owens, he added, “It is hard not to conclude that they are actively trying to degrade our culture and hurt our children.” Owens, who has a history with Cardi B, agreed with Carlson, calling “what we were looking at last night… a lesbian sex scene being simulated on television, and this is considered feminist.”
“I agree with you 100 percent in the assessment that this feels more sinister. This is starting to me to seem like it’s not even left or right, it’s not a political issue. This seems like an attack on American values, American traditions, and you’re actually actively trying to make children aspire to things that are grotesque,” Owens said, adding: “We are celebrating perversity in America.”
The best part of the segment, outside of Owens’ faux outage over Mr. Potato Head, is that despite the conservative commenters calling “WAP” the “destruction of American values,” footage from Cardi and Megan’s performance played over and over again. It’s objectively very funny to see Carlson’s befuddled face next to this:
my heavens pic.twitter.com/PknJk6gSZk
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) March 16, 2021
Carlson summed up his thesis with: “Totally degrading. And the same people who make it will lecture you about ‘you hate women’ or something. Who hates women, really?” You can watch the segment here.
(Via the Daily Beast)
Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion was a big winner at the Grammy Awards, taking home three trophies for Best New Artist, Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance (for her “Savage” remix with Beyonce). With one of those wins, Meg joined Lauryn Hill in an exclusive club. Meg Thee Stallion Breaks Tradition At The Grammys […]
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Megan Thee Stallion — who came away with a Best New Artist win at last night’s Grammys ceremony — doesn’t believe that the awards show is inherently rigged. While some stars, like The Weeknd and Lil Wayne, spent the last several weeks railing against the Recording Academy’s “unfair” selection practices, Megan had a far more philosophical outlook on the results of the voting. Stopped by TMZ at some point over the course of the evening, Megan gave a straightforward response to their question about whether she had advanced awareness of the results.
“I didn’t know sh*t,” she replied. “Hell no, the Grammys ain’t rigged. Bitch, you win some, you lose some.” Asked about the importance of the wins for women, she just threw out her standard response: “Real Hot Girl Sh*t!”
The Grammys’ “snub” of artists like The Weeknd in multiple categories — and the singer’s reactive boycott of last night’s ceremony — have only contributed to the feeling that the Grammys have become more of a “popularity contest” in recent years, despite efforts to become more inclusive. However, as Cardi B pointed out, plenty of artists were nominated despite lack of mainstream recognition.
While it’s easy for artists who miss out to chalk their losses up to conspiracies and agendas, the truth is, a voting body comprised of such a broad variety of music industry professionals can hardly be expected to agree on anything, even if more efforts are made to include atypical entries on ballots and shortlists — and artists, who by nature are “sensitive about our sh*t,” to paraphrase Erykah Badu, are exactly the type of folks to take their ommissions personally and resort so using social media to publicize their sour grapes.
You can watch the video of Megan responding to the question of whether the Grammys are rigged here.
Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
At every Grammy Awards ceremony, there are winners and losers.
Here, though, “loser” is a relative term. If you’re an artist who is doing so well that you’re at the Grammys at all, it’s hard to imagine that you’re anything but a winner. That said, if you’re particularly confrontational, “loser” might be what you call somebody who was nominated for an award and did not win that award. On the flip side, you could say that some artists didn’t lose: they won the right to keep their title of nominee (at the cost of not getting promoted to winner).
Then there are cases where you don’t need to glass-half-full the truth to declare somebody was a winner, whether they went home with a trophy or two or otherwise excelled during music’s biggest night. Last night’s Grammys ceremony was full of people who had different levels of success, so let’s get into who thrived and who didn’t quite do that, as well as who offered some of the evening’s biggest surprises.
Meg had one of the best winning percentages of the night, taking home three of the four Grammys for which she was nominated — she won Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song (both for “Savage”), and Best New Artist, but didn’t claim Record Of The Year.
Outside of the awards themselves, Meg was notary-like with how she put her stamp on the evening. She and Cardi B made more modest-minded music admirers mad with a performance of “WAP” (more on that in a second). Even the Grammy Meg didn’t win, she kind of did win it. While Billie Eilish accepted the Record Of The Year trophy, she got behind the podium and mostly spoke about how Meg should have won it instead of her.
It’s true that “WAP” was probably the biggest song of 2020. It’s also true that it wasn’t made for TV (or for any audible medium at all, according to Ben Shapiro). So, when it was revealed that Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion would be performing the hit during the Grammys broadcast, fans were ready to see a non-insignificant portion of the song left on the cutting room floor. That was true to the extreme. The lyric sheet for this version of the track looked like a brand new Madlibs book. I’m sure Cardi and Meg did all they could to bring “WAP” to the Grammys and they still delivered an entertaining few minutes of television, but the performance came across like they didn’t secure the rights to the song, so they got as close to actually performing it as they could without getting into legal trouble.
As is tradition, the Grammys took a very long time. Even before the actual ceremony, there was the also-lengthy Grammy premiere ceremony, which the Recording Academy roped Aiko into hosting. Between that and the actual show, it was a long, grueling day for Aiko and she didn’t even end up winning any of the three Grammys for which she was nominated.
Thankfully, Aiko is an optimist. The hosting gig was a personal triumph for Aiko, as she wrote on Twitter, “i conquered a major fear of public speaking today by hosting the freaking Grammy Premiere Ceremony!!” She was even cool with not taking home a trophy, as she tweeted, “i know what its like to lose… do u? do u?! lol,” later adding, “what a crazy day! but its all good. love you all so much.”
i conquered a major fear of public speaking today by hosting the freaking Grammy Premiere Ceremony!! thank you @RecordingAcad for having me!! see u at the show after i take this lil cat nap
— Chilombo (@JheneAiko) March 14, 2021
i know what its like to lose… do u? do u?! lol
— Chilombo (@JheneAiko) March 15, 2021
what a crazy day! but its all good
love you all so much
— Chilombo (@JheneAiko) March 15, 2021
In some ways, the Grammys are a popularity contest: If some no-name (not Noname) from the middle of nowhere made one of the year’s best songs, they’re probably not going to win a Grammy for it. The Recording Academy further proved that with their pick for Song Of The Year, as HER took home the prize over people like Beyonce, Roddy Ricch, Taylor Swift, Post Malone, Dua Lipa, and Billie Eilish. While HER is certainly a successful artist and “I Can’t Breathe” is an impactful song built on meaningful social justice themes, she’s not exactly a household name and her victory certainly left many viewers feeling like Michael Bluth:
Over the past year-plus, pretty much every aspect has been entirely different than it was pre-pandemic. That includes The Grammys, but the fact that the ceremony even happened at all is a grounding force. Yes, the show wasn’t really like previous broadcasts in any way, but it was also as close to normal as any sort of live music event has been since early 2020. Considering the circumstances, the Recording Academy excelled with their broadcast. Delayed ceremony aside, one thing music fans have been able to count on towards the start of the year is finding out what music and artists the Recording Academy “secret commitees” deserve to be honored, for better or worse.
That said, the whole thing was a bit weird, right? During performances, there were probably too many cuts to Trevor Noah and other artists in the room to forcefully drive home the point that everybody was actually there IRL. Those shots just hit different when it’s just one or two people side-stage instead of a big seated audience. Then, when the performances were done, the golf-level applause didn’t make the Grammys seem as epic as they usually do. Going the NBA route and piping in artificial fan noise wouldn’t have been a bad move.
The Recording Academy faced an impossible problem, but they still managed to put on a functional and entertaining show that offered plenty of highlights and made you forget this is an atypical Grammy year. Ultimately, though, it often felt less than grand, which, again, is really nobody’s fault.
Sure, let’s flip this topic of Grammy normalcy around one more time. Usually, artists and their crews only have a few minutes to get an elaborate performance set-up onto the singular Grammy stage at the Staples Center. This year, though, the set-up made things different, arguably better. The multiple stages on-site allowed for performers to get their own look going in their own space, all with minimal time between performances. In an aesthetic highlight, Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff, and Aaron Dessner were all able to take to a mini cabin in a mystical-looking forest, for example, it feels like that something that gorgeous may not have been possible in a traditional Grammy year. Lil Baby’s cinematic performance that addressed police brutality definitely wouldn’t have been an eighth as impactful on a traditional stage.
Taika Waititi himself would agree with this pick, as it seemed like he didn’t really expect the Jojo Rabbit soundtrack to win Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media over films like Frozen 2 and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga. Waititi offered a simple “Lol wtfffff” on Twitter in reaction to the news, and during his acceptance speech, he noted, “I guess they’re just giving Grammys to anyone now! I’ll take it, thank you.” He went on, “It was so long ago, I can barely remember anything about making that movie — but it seems like it’s never going to go away, and I’m happy about that.”
So, if you don’t remember the Jojo Rabbit soundtrack, it’s OK because Waititi probably doesn’t either.
Whether this is a winner or loser is a matter of perspective. Audience shots at awards shows are usually the most fruitful vine from which to pluck plump, dank memes of celebrities who didn’t expect the camera to be on them at a share-worthy moment. In that regard, music fans and internet jokesters lose. Masks could be seen as a major victory for artists who didn’t pick up a trophy, though, considering a wearable specifically made to cover the lower half of your face makes it a heck of a lot easier to hide your disappointment when you come away from a category empty-handed. Frustrated cursing no longer has to be under your breath!
The Beyhive would never let me hear the end of it if I declared Beyonce a loser, so thankfully, she had an amazing night. For years, she has been climbing up the all-time Grammy wins list, and she made history this year by picking up more trophies to become the woman and singer with the most Grammy victories.
That would have been enough to get her on this list, but that was just one aspect of a multi-pronged night for Bey. She and Megan Thee Stallion became the first women to win Best Rap Performance with “Savage,” and on top of that, her daughter Blue Ivy managed to become one of the youngest Grammy winners ever. Jay-Z was the only member of his immediate family to not directly win a Grammy this year, except even that’s not quite true since he has a writing credit on the “Savage” remix.
So, in what was perhaps the least surprising takeaway from the evening (or from any day, really), the Carter family is doing quite well.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Last year Cardi B made history by winning Best Rap Album for her debut Invasion Of Privacy, becoming the first woman to ever do so. This year, Megan and Beyonce continued to pave the way for women in hip-hop by picking up the trophy for Best Rap Performance, and later on, for Best Rap Song for their collaboration on the “Savage (Remix).” That win puts Beyonce up to 27 Grammys total — including her earlier win with “Brown Skin Girl” for Best Music Video — and she has now tied a huge Grammys record.
This was what they looked like when the win was announced:
Megan @TheeStallion and @Beyonce accept their award for ‘Best Rap Song’ at the #GRAMMYs. pic.twitter.com/Gy1RSsUpHm
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) March 15, 2021
Pretty classic surprise expressions, right there. For her part, Megan didn’t even know Beyonce was present at the ceremony, so got another big surprise when she saw Bey walking up to the stage to help accept the trophy:
Megan’s reaction when she saw Beyoncé
#GRAMMYs pic.twitter.com/GpWHRamQmA
— Makho Ndlovu (@makhondlovu) March 15, 2021
Finally, hearing from Beyonce in person was almost gift enough, and the way her and Megan have supported each other has been pretty inspiring, too.
crying beyoncé and megan really are the best duo #grammys pic.twitter.com/aliyNpefj1
— waleed (@seIenasctrl) March 15, 2021
But before they could even get off the stage, tonight’s host Trevor Noah stopped the pair to let them know with the addition of two more Grammys tonight, Beyonce has now tied the record for most awards any female artist has received. That doesn’t mean we’re not still mad Lemonade was snubbed, but it does help a little.
