Photo from Reddit
Tyler Okonma’s Grammy’s win this past Sunday was a monumental milestone in his career. But it does open up a long-standing discussion towards the academy and there views on music and its genres.
The album Igor was nominated for Rap album of the year and won at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards.
But the problem with this is that Tyler had even released a statement on twitter back when the album first came out in May of 2019 that Igor was unlike his other albums released and that it wasn’t a “Rap” album, but it was “more of an experience a collection of songs that told a story and to just go through the album song by song listening to every minute of it”.
The Academy must have not seen this statement because the album ended up being put into the category of rap which even Tyler who was very grateful for his award yet stated when being interviewed right after that “it felt like a backhanded compliment”.
This has been a recurring issue with the academy and it's way of categorizing its awards.
Many African American Artists have risen their concerns of being put into the wrong categories because they think that that’s how the academy sees them as “urban” even if it is far from the kind of music the artist are making.
One big example not just for the academy but for the music charts and award shows is with Lil Nas X and his release of Old Town Road. The fact that Country Billboards would not classify the Country fusion song on their charts was one of the biggest issues within the community. Since Lil Nas X said his song was country. It took an old Country artist Billy Rae Cyrus to be featured on the song’s remix for these groups to finally recognize the song. This in itself sparked up the debate of African Americans being forced into a genre and in a way not being allowed into the other fields.
Why does this matter? Well for Tyler his win becomes in a way a reminder of this mistreatment and unfairness the music industry has always done. Which puts a damper on his win and how much he himself enjoyed the process of making his album and also the project itself.
This raises up many questions. Will the academy and most importantly the industry start to listen especially after the countless amount of artists starting to speak up? One can only hope and just keep a lookout to what comes from this in the next upcoming weeks.