Last night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Kendrick Lamar’s and Co.’s artistic efforts brought home several more GRAMMY Awards for the Hip Hop community. Despite missing out on the most coveted trophy of the night in Album of the Year (which, expectantly was bestowed to one-woman pop powerhouse Taylor Swift), the To Pimp a Butterfly vacuum raked in an impressive four awards with Best Rap Album, Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (“These Walls”), Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance (“Alright”).
The latter category tends to escape the public’s general knowledge (regardless of specific genre) as to what actually meets the criteria for a “performance” deemed worthy of immortalization. As it stands, we are witnessing the reigning and undisputed best rapper sweep the Rap categories but has that always been the case?
In short, the answer is yes–accompanied with an asterisk as big as the enigma surrounding the category. Yesterday, Lamar became only the sixth recipient of the award in a category that has boasted big name nominees such as Eminem, Drake, Lupe Fiasco and even tenured GRAMMY host, LL Cool J. The Compton co-mayor also became the second recipient to earn repeat victories in the category (following Jay Z and Kanye West’s back-to-back wins in 2012-2013– for songs off the same Watch the Throne album at that!) and joins DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Young MC, Macklemore, Ryan Lewis and Wanz as the sole Best Rap Performance titleholders.
Shortly before Will Smith would go on to conquer both television and film in a career that is still ongoing, he and DJ Jazzy Jeff scored the Best Rap Performance GRAMMY in 1989 for the hilarious “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” Two years later, its embryo was divided to create two separate categories: Best Rap Solo Performance and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. Several rap classics like Lil Wayne’s “A Milli,” Arrested Development’s “Tennessee,” Method Man & Mary J. Blige “You’re All I Need to Get By” and Outkast’s “Ms. Jackson” all enjoyed success in the split categories until it all came full circle once again in 2012.
Albeit the past winners and nominees offered up top notch material to keep any Hip Hop playlist booming, the question still remains what exactly constitutes a GRAMMY-worthy performance? When Kendrick uzi’ed off “Tell ’em all to come and get me/Reapin’ everything I sow/So my karma come and Heaven no preliminary hearing/So my record and my motherfucking gang can stand in silence for the record,” did that make “Alright” a shoe-in to best radio ubiquity such as Drake’s “Back to Back” and Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen?” Of course it did.
The GRAMMYs indicates that the nominated record must “achieve prominence” upon its release and throughout the course of the eligibility year. If the song excites the voters (having a buzz to go along with your nomination obviously can’t hurt) then GRAMMY gold may just very well be on the horizon for a rapper who can melt the microphone in the public eyesight.
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