| If we were to talk in 2025, I get the sense that we would be able to see from that distance that we're going through this period where we're redefining what it means to engage in events. | | | | |  | Roddy Ricch at Lollapalooza, Chicago, July 30, 2021. "Live Life Fast" is out today on Atlantic.
(Scott Legato/Getty Images) | | | | | "If we were to talk in 2025, I get the sense that we would be able to see from that distance that we're going through this period where we're redefining what it means to engage in events." | | | | These Are My Confessions
There's a scene in THE BIG SHORT, ADAM MCKAY's film about the 2008 financial crisis, in which a hedge fund manager played by STEVE CARELL is listening to a pair of Florida mortgage brokers explain how they cut corners to secure loans for unqualified home buyers. After a few minutes, Carell's character pulls his associates aside to ask, "I don't get it—why are they confessing?" "They're not confessing," comes the reply. "They're bragging."
I found those lines running through my head as I read Billboard's detailed account of the RECORDING ACADEMY's bizarre decision to expand the fields of nominees for the 2022 Grammys after voting on the nominations had closed and only hours before the nominees' names were to be revealed. PAUL GREIN's story, based on interviews with Academy CEO HARVEY MASON JR. and two Academy trustees, drops a small bit of breaking news in paragraph three—Mason, as you may have suspected, didn't like the original slates of nominees in the show's top four categories—and then a bombshell in paragraph eight. Mason, contrary to what the Academy told reporters in November, knew exactly which artists and records would be added before the trustees, acting on his request, decided there would be 10 nominees in each category instead of eight. The trustees tell Grein they didn't know the names before they voted but Mason did, and he told them an expansion was needed specifically to add diversity to the show.
"We obviously knew he knew something," trustee TRACY GERSHON tells Grein. "None of us asked. None of us wanted to know. We shouldn't know. Our decision was made on [the principle of] opening it up."
The trustees' main hesitancy, according to Gershon, was that they were making a rushed, last-minute decision that might be perceived badly by the media, who would "figure that there was some tomfoolery, which there wasn't."
But there was. I'm in the media and I know because I read Mason's and Gershon's own words.
Mason wanted to see hip-hop better represented in the nominations, which is a valid goal. It's the way he and his board went about doing it that's problematic. He knew, for example, that KANYE WEST's DONDA and TAYLOR SWIFT's EVERMORE had come in ninth and 10th in the Academy membership's nominating vote for Album of the Year, and he knew BABY KEEM and AROOJ AFTAB were the next names up for Best New Artist. That's one more hip-hop nominee in each field, along with one other reasonable (great, even, in Aftab's case) added nominee. The trustees understood what Mason wanted and what they were voting on. A quick, um, fix.
They're proud of what they did. They're bragging. "The new version of the Academy is that we are able to move quickly," Mason tells Grein. "Anyone who was caught off guard by this, I'm sorry you were caught off guard by this, but you really should prepare because there's going to be more. If the Academy can't move at the speed of culture, we're going to be left behind."
But the Academy had nearly a year since the last Grammys to move at the speed of culture if the culture was asking for more nominees in 2022. And for nearly a year it did nothing of the sort. Waiting a year and then acting in a matter of hours isn't moving at the speed of culture. It's cramming for a culture test you know you're about to fail. Tomfoolery, if you ask me. And damaging to the credibility of a show that, against my better judgment, I still want to believe in.
And it's cosmetic tomfoolery. The same field of voters who thought Kanye West and Baby Keem were the ninth or 10th most worthy nominees in their categories is now voting on the winners, and if you think they're actually going to give either one of them an actual Grammy, I have a mortgage in Florida to sell you.
But at least the culture will get to hear their names on the show now.
In Other Tomfoolery News
Headline: "Travis Scott Is Trying to Standardize Safety at Festivals After Astroworld."
Subhead: "The rapper has been convening with the U.S. Conference of Mayors on a proposed safety 'blueprint' for the festival industry."
I swear I'm not making this up.
It's Friday
And that means new music from RODDY RICCH, whose second album, LIVE LIFE FAST, features a guest list including Future, Lil Baby, Ty Dolla $ign and 21 Savage... And high-concept hip-hop queen TIERRA WHACK, whose R&B? EP (actually released Thursday; the question mark is part of the title) arrives a week after her POP? EP and two weeks after her RAP? EP... And a posthumous single from AALIYAH with the WEEKND.
Plus new albums and EPs from BOLDY JAMES & THE ALCHEMIST, NCT (released earlier this week), YOUNG BLEU, GUCCI MANE (Christmas album featuring his New 1017 crew), CHIEF KEEF, SEVEN DAVIS JR., COLIN BENDERS, DARTLAND, NEW GRASS, GONG SPLAT (instrumental group led by Osees' John Dwyer), DJ KAY SLAY, JOHNNY MARR... And the SING 2 soundtrack, featuring U2, Halsey, Bomba Estéro, Tori Kelly and others.
Rest in Peace
Sudanese singer/songwriter ABDELKARIM ELKABLI. Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok called him "a symbol of Sudanese art, a large literary monument who engraved his name in the consciousness of our people with letters of light"... WANDA YOUNG, one of two lead singer of Motown's the Marvelettes... Longtime Roots bassist LEONARD HUBBARD... Toronto rock guitarist IAN WORANG, whose bands included Uncut, Bishop Morocco and the Two Koreas... ALEX LINDEN, guitarist for the Wisconsin metal band Bereft.
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|  | | Billboard |
| | The Inside Story Behind the Recording Academy's Decision to Expand to 10 Grammy Nominees | | by Paul Grein | | Thursday Nov. 18 was an eventful day for Harvey Mason, jr., CEO of the Recording Academy. He got an advance copy of the 64th annual Grammy nominations, which were due to be announced publicly the following Tuesday. What did he think? | |  | | The Ringer |
| | The History of SoundCloud Rap, a Face-Tatted Vision of Hip-hop's Future | | by Grant Rindner | | One of the most popular movements in rap last decade traces its roots more to the internet than any specific region. How did a bunch of unpolished songs uploaded to a streaming platform lead to the mainstream rise of artists like Juice WRLD and XXXTentacion? | |  | | GQ |
| | Nas On Joining Hip-Hop's New Frontier: Podcasting | | by Jordan Coley | | Escobar co-hosts a new show, 'The Bridge: 50 Years of Hip-Hop,' alongside rap journalist veteran Minya "Miss Info" Oh. | |  | | The Atlantic |
| | How BTS Made One Night Last Forever | | by Lenika Cruz | | With four sold-out concerts in Los Angeles, the pop superstars proved their timelessness to critics, fans, and themselves. | | | | Billboard |
| | Warner Music Group Acquires 300 Entertainment in $400M Deal | | by Dan Rys | | Kevin Liles will take over as chairman/CEO of 300 and Elektra Music Group. | |  | | UPROXX |
| | Uproxx Music Critics Poll 2021 | | by Steven Hyden, Carolyn Droke, Zac Gelfand... | | More than 200 critics were asked to weigh in on the best albums and songs of 2021. This was their verdict. | |  | | NME |
| | Sonos Radio is an ode to the mixtape, bringing the art of curation to digital radio | | by Rhian Daly | | Since its launch in April 2020, the platform has brought unmissable opportunities for music discovery and shared peeks into the playlists of some of music's greatest icons. | |  | | Pitchfork |
| | How Independent Music Venues Are Surviving the Pandemic's Long Tail | | by Marc Hogan | | After a year of COVID closures, live music made a halting but hard-won return in 2021. Big questions remain, but according to venue operators, there are reasons to be hopeful about the future. | |  | | Los Angeles Times |
| | For fans, artists and concert industry, a chaotic 2021 gives way to a suddenly perilous 2022 | | by August Brown | | Between the Delta variant and the Astroworld tragedy, 2021 was a gut check for live music. Outdoor festivals may be a safe space, but Omicron looms over 2022. | |  | | VICE |
| | It's Time to Admit that Genesis Has Always Been a Great Band | | by Jelisa Castrodale | | It's their final tour, and I have feelings about saying goodbye. | | | there must be some kind of mistake |
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|  | | BuzzFeed News |
| | Jason Isbell Is Tired Of Country's Love Affair With White Nostalgia | | by Elamin Abdelmahmoud | | "I think it's possible to acknowledge that you have benefited from a system that's unequal without feeling shame or even guilt from it." | | | | The Ringer |
| | Where Exactly Does Rick Ross Fit in the Modern Rap Landscape? | | by Justin Charity | | With his 11th album, 'Richer Than I Ever Been,' Rozay struggles to reconcile his knack for embellishment with the sparser, darker tendencies in contemporary hip-hop. | | | | Billboard |
| | Salty Management Disbands: 'Boys' Club' Indie Rock Firm Folds Following Sexual Harassment Claim | | by Kristin Robinson | | One of indie rock 's most sought-after management firms, Salty Management, quietly shuttered its business on Oct. 29, and scrubbed nearly all traces of its social media accounts, website, and publicly listed emails from the internet after a sexual harassment complaint against co-founder Chris Crowley led to a staff exodus. | |  | | Variety |
| | Are Spotify and the Comedy Community Headed Into Battle? What's Behind the Faceoff | | by Chris Willman | | You don't hear much about a "war on Christmas" this year, but you do hear murmurings about a war on comedy. It's a loggerheads that has Spotify under scrutiny for removing a significant number of comedy albums from its service, in response to many comics and their reps believing they have a right to the same kind of dual royalties that musicians have always gotten. | |  | | Places Journal |
| | Prince & Place: A Primer on the Geography of Music | | by Rashad Shabazz | | Listening to Prince, we are immersed in the soundscape of Minneapolis - a musical geography shaped by racism, class inequality, sexuality, migration, habitation, and displacement. | |  | | The New Yorker |
| | A Close Read of the Beatles in 'Get Back' | | by Adam Gopnik | | It's a revelation how gentle the four bandmates are with one another, in the pained, semi-articulate way of families. | |  | | Passion of the Weiss |
| | 'All I Need Is a Little Flame': An Interview With Blockhead | | by Zilla Rocca | | Zilla talks with Blockhead about his new collaboration with Aesop Rock, 'Garbology,' and why it took so long for the two to drop a joint project. | |  | | DJ Mag |
| | UK clubs are open, but promoters face more challenges than ever | | by Will Pritchard | | Putting on parties demands optimism even at the best of times. After an unimaginable 20 months, the limits of hope continue to be tested. | | | | Los Angeles Times |
| | Vicente Fernández, the King | | by Gustavo Arellano, Iliana Limón Romero, Steve Saldivar... | | Vicente Fernández's music was a soundtrack of love, heartache and resistance to Mexicans and Mexican Americans for decades. We talk why. | |  | | Literary Hub |
| | Afrodisiac: A Textual Meditation on Greg Tate | | by Michael A. Gonzales | | In 1982, my introduction to the music writing of future mentor and friend Greg Tate was a black magic moment that caused me to celebrate as his words literally changed my young life. | | | | | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" | | |  | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator | | |  |
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