Jay-Z has not attended a Grammy awards show since 1998 and he wasn’t about to change that, “I didn’t think they gave the rightful respect to hip-hop”. Jigga said this despite several nominations and an award for best rap album in 1999.
He isn’t the first to do this, the same year that Jay-Z boycotted the Grammy so did Eminem, even though he won a Grammy. Em has since given up on that cause as evident with his 2001 performance with Elton John. Over 10 years earlier, hip-hop pioneers DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Salt-n-Pepa and Kin ‘n Play also boycotted because the award for best rap was not televised. “What I really wanted to accomplish is, next year, or two years from now, the rappers would be able to have what I didn’t have,” Will Smith commented in 1989.
Although the Rap category and the Grammy’s have gone from nothing to some, it is apparent that rappers still feel that they are not giving it the respect it deserves. Maybe, the Grammy’s will open their eyes and start to recognize the true spirit of hip-hop by creating an underground category because after all that is where it all began.
