By MAX LaROCCO
Rapper and Compton-native Kendrick Lamar took home four awards of his 11 nominations at the 58th annual Despite his socially relevant and politically charged release, “To Pimp A Butterfly” being the favorite to win, the award was instead given to Taylor Swift’s retro-pop album “1989.”
Lamar’s album talks about influences, his legacy, his life as an African American and what that means to him. Musically, it is much more based in funk, soul, and jazz rather than 2015 rap and hip-hop.
Swift’s 1989, also awarded Best Pop-Vocal Album, received praise for its deviation from her previous efforts and commercial breakthrough as a country musician. Though the album was released in late 2014, the Grammy eligibility period runs from October to September, and it was therefore considered in the 2015 awards season.
According to review website AllMusic.com, 1989 received a 3 out of 5 star rating from staff and 4 out of 5 stars from users, while To Pimp A Butterfly received a 4 and a half star rating out of 5 from staff and 5 out of 5 stars from users. On most review sites that featured both albums, Lamar tied or outperformed Swift.
According to the Grammys website, the awards are defined as a “peer honor, awarded by and to artists and technical professionals for artistic or technical achievement, not sales or chart position.”
The only place Taylor Swift did outperform Kendrick Lamar was in sales and chart positions. So why did Taylor Swift receive the award?
“I think that [To Pimp A Butterfly] was maybe a little… too much to handle?” said Chris Cannon, secretary of Ramapo College’s Brothers Making A Difference, who considers himself to be a fan of Kendrick Lamar.
Though he had not heard “To Pimp A Butterfly,” he instead spoke to Lamar’s controversial Grammy performance, where the rapper walked out to the mic as part of a chain gang, before black lights revealed the entire group’s costumes to be painted with African imagery.
“Going off his performance at the Grammys, I’m going to assume his album was similar to that… really in your face. Maybe made a lot of people a little standoffish or uncomfortable,” said Cannon. “Taylor Swift is kind of girly […] and I guess maybe that’s what people felt was more appropriate.”
In the light of the Oscars So White controversy, where exactly zero actors of color were nominated for the 88th Academy Awards Ceremony, many are beginning to consider awards shows to be biased towards white people.
For example, during the 54th Ceremony, Kendrick Lamar’s “coming of age in Compton” concept album Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, was nominated for seven awards and lost all of them, including Best Rap Album to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, two white men.
“I definitely think it’s an issue that he did not win,” said Halle Pineiro, a Taylor Swift fan, in an email. “As just a music listener who loved her album, I think she deserved to win because it’s great.
“But if, when comparing the two, he outranked her in the necessary categories, he should have won,” Pineiro added. “It’s just logic, the better album should win, and clearly music professionals feel his album is better in each.”
Pineiro says she is unfamiliar with Kendrick Lamar and his album, though after reading some of his lyrics, she respects him and his importance as an artist.
It definitely explains the issue, especially because of the fact that he did out performed her except in one place. It is also very shocking to see that in the 54th Ceremony he has also lost all the awards he was nominated for.
I think that this would be more of a story than the issue, although you did pull out the issue from the bigger story. Being an avid listener of Kendrick Lamar’s music, I don’t understand why he didn’t win.