Kid Cudi already voiced his disdain for the 2021 Grammy Award nominations due to their blatant snub of The Weeknd, and now the After Hours vocalist, who received zero nominations for his chart-topping, record-breaking album, has now made his frustrations with the Recording Academy loud and clear.
Following the announcement of the nominees on Tuesday (November 24), he shared a blunt message on Instagram.
“The Grammys remain corrupt. You owe me, my fans and the industry transparency,” Abel’s text read in the post.
According to Grammy Chief Harvey Mason Jr., there is no calculated attempt to shut-out any artist, including The Weeknd, from receiving nominations. Instead, Mason told Variety in an interview published Tuesday that there just aren’t enough nomination slots within the big four categories for every artist to receive recognition.
“Y’know, it really just comes down to the voting body that decides,” Mason begins.
“We have eight nomination slots to fill in [the “Big Four” categories: Best Album, Song, Record and New Artist], five in others, and the voters vote for their favorites. It’s really interesting, though.
Mason goes on to explain the same ‘Core’ 20-person committee votes on the big four categories and was tasked with choosing from a pool of 23,000 submissions this year — in addition to affirming hours upon hours of consideration goes into awarding nominations.
“All the records get the fairest of fair shakes. We listen to all the music — even an album, you’re listening to almost the whole album, it takes I don’t know how many hours. It’s a long, arduous process and people take pride in it. The people in that room care: there’s no agendas in there, there’s no, ‘let’s snub this person,’ or that person. It’s about, ‘Let’s try and find excellence.'”
After Hours debuted on top of the Billboard 200 back in March and spent a month at the No. 1 spot. The album sold 444,000 units first week and at one point, spawned berths on the Hot 100 Chart for all 14-tracks appearing on the original release.
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The Weeknd isn’t the only R&B artist who is currently livid with Tuesday’s nominations released. Teyana Taylor also delivered scathing remarks about the all-male cast of nominees for the Best R&B album category saying, “Y’all was better off just saying best MALE R&B ALBUM cause all I see is dick in this category.”
Revisit the stream for After Hours below.
The Grammy’s are washed up but at the same time I’m getting tired of rappers throwing a tantrum everytime their arse isn’t kissed. If hip hop is a “culture” as rappers love to reiterate every five seconds then come together and do your own thing. Make your own “Grammy’s” that’s relevant to you. You’re expecting relevant choices from old farts in offices?
In a perfect world your idea sounds good until you realize doing that produces some other bullshit like the BET awards
Sore losers and crybabies
so the weeknd calls the grammy panel corrupt because he didn’t get nominated. what about the others.
It’s only rigged when you lose…
Just like donald Trump. It’s only “rigged” when things dont go your way. What a diva..lol
Imagine making millions upon millions of dollars and getting hired to play the Super Bowl and still bitching smh
After the year he had its pretty shocking he didnt get at least one nomination but i dont feel sorry for him because its been almost 30 years and Nas has never gotten a grammy so tough luck.
Agree. Nas is way overdue for one. Even though I still think it’s a popularity contest. He didn’t get one even when he used sell millions of records
Imagine making drug anthems your whole career, then show up to the awards show dressed like someone who drove under the influence? Corny. Corny. Corny.
let’s hear your album then, corn-dog!
Let’s hear yours, you fucking slob. It’ll probably be 2 hours of your fat ass crinkling fast food wrappers and grunting lol.
Fuck! This reply made me laugh hard LOL
Bottom line; they’ll still submit music next year. And if they are nominated, they won’t complain about it. Only resolution is to simply boycott the Grammys, but ego gets in the way year after year.
The Weeknd is so off key, his music so up and down, that I can’t believe he was even nominated.
Grammy’s: Stop nominating Pop 40 trash and nominate real music with real substance again. His riff on that radio pop hit was a GD copy of an 80s flock of seagulls song, and I’m sick of seeing artists like this that sound like every other artist out there ripping off real musicians and then getting a– hurt when they rightfully lose.
Get a life.