Drake ended Sunday night with a win at the 2023 Grammy Awards, despite intentionally not submitting any music. The Toronto rapper won the award for Best Melodic Rap Performance with Future‘s “Wait For U,” which also features Tems. For the win, Future beat out Kendrick Lamar’s “Die Hard,” DJ Khaled’s “Beautiful,” Jack Harlow’s “First Class,” and Latto’s “Big Energy (Live).”
“Wait For U” was released on Future’s ninth studio album, I Never Liked You, back in April 2022. The hit song debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Despite no submissions, Drake released plenty of music that could’ve qualified for the Grammys. He dropped Honestly, Nevermind as well as Her Loss in 2022.
As for Drake’s issue with the Recording Academy, he previously withdrew his music from the 64th Annual Grammy Awards. He was already up for Best Rap Album (Certified Lover Boy) and Best Rap Performance (“Way 2 Sexy”). Going back further, Drake once voiced his frustration with the Recording Academy in a social media post from November 2020. He was unhappy that The Weeknd‘s After Hours album wasn’t up for any awards that year.
“I think we should stop allowing ourselves to be shocked every year by the disconnect between impactful music and these awards and just accept that what once was the highest form of recognition may no longer matter to the artist that exists now and the ones that come after,” he wrote on Instagram at the time.
He continued: “It’s like a relative you keep expecting to fix up but they just won’t change their ways. The other day I said @theweeknd was a lock for either album or song of the year along with countless other reasonable assumptions and it just never goes that way. This is a great time for somebody to start something new that we can build up over time and pass on to the generations to come.” Revisit Future’s “Wait For U” music video below featuring Drake and Tems.
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