Kanye West’s Stormy Relationship With the Grammys Erupts Again

When the most recent Grammy nominations have been introduced in November, Kanye West picked up 5 nods, together with album of the yr, teeing up a possible reconciliation between one in all pop music’s most mercurial stars and the establishment he has spent a lot of the final twenty years criticizing, difficult and generally outright insulting — at the same time as West has yearned for its affirmation.

However final Friday, a little bit greater than two weeks earlier than the sixty fourth annual Grammy Awards ceremony, set for April 3 in Las Vegas — and weeks into negotiations over a deliberate efficiency on the present — organizers advised West’s staff that he wouldn’t be allowed to carry out, in response to a consultant of the rapper and producer.

The organizers cited West’s erratic and troubling public habits in current weeks, in response to an individual with information of the choice, who was granted anonymity to debate an inside matter.

That habits included the discharge of an animated music video that portrayed the kidnapping and burial of a determine who seemed loads like Pete Davidson — the comic who has been courting Kim Kardashian, West’s former spouse — and an Instagram submit taunting Trevor Noah of “The Each day Present,” who’s internet hosting this yr’s Grammys, with a racial slur that resulted in West being banned from Instagram for twenty-four hours. (Noah mentioned on Twitter that he had not referred to as for West to be reduce. “I mentioned counsel Kanye not cancel Kanye,” he wrote.)

For West, music’s perennial chaos agent, the episode could have been simply the most recent blur of sensational headlines. However for the Grammys, it’s also a setback in a marketing campaign to lure West again to the fold. He’s maybe essentially the most vocal of a circle of high-profile Black creators — additionally together with Jay-Z, Drake, the Weekend and Frank Ocean — who’ve condemned the Grammys for occasionally failing to acknowledge the work of creators of colour, notably in hip-hop, in its most high-profile classes.

The Recording Academy, which presents the awards, has made extraordinary efforts to accommodate West, who has gained 22 Grammys in his profession. For the most recent present, a last-minute rule change resulted in West being added to the poll for album of the yr.

In an interview with Billboard, Harvey Mason Jr., the academy’s chief govt, mentioned that when the preliminary slate of nominees was ready with eight contenders within the main competitions, he seen a dearth of rap within the high classes. Inside days, a proposal to increase the poll to 10 slots in these classes was accredited by the academy’s board, bringing “Donda,” together with Taylor Swift’s “Evermore,” into consideration for finest album.

Since turning into the academy’s chief final yr, Mason has made private appeals to dissenting artists, together with West. That outreach, and the album of the yr nomination, stirred frustration and anger amongst some members of the academy, who’ve been appalled by West’s previous antics, similar to posting a video on social media in 2020 that exhibits a Grammy trophy apparently being defiled in a rest room bowl.

“How vile and disrespectful,” Diane Warren, the Grammy-winning songwriter of hits like “Nothing’s Gonna Cease Us Now,” mentioned on the time.

West’s current habits on social media has made mending fences even riskier for the Recording Academy. At all times an oversharer, West has currently used his Instagram account to air grievances over custody and baby care points amid his divorce from Kardashian. That dispute has coincided with West’s assaults on Davidson, in addition to figures like Noah who’ve criticized the musician’s posts as verging on threats and harassment.

Nonetheless, for the Recording Academy, reconciling with West may have symbolic energy, suggesting that the establishment’s efforts to revamp its voting membership and adapt to a faster-moving music enterprise with a youthful, extra numerous listenership have been working.

West’s complaints concerning the Grammys return a minimum of 17 years. In 2005, even earlier than that yr’s nominations have been introduced, West was telling Grammy voters that if he didn’t win album of the yr for “Late Registration,” his second LP, he would attribute the loss to a judgment on his private habits reasonably than his artistry.

“I don’t care if I jumped up and down proper now on the sofa like Tom Cruise,” he advised MTV Information on the time. “I don’t care how a lot I stunt — you’ll be able to by no means take away from the quantity of labor I put into it.” (He misplaced to U2’s “Easy methods to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.”)

Since then, West’s criticisms of the Grammys have been sporadic however unrelenting. In 2015, for instance, after Beck gained album of the yr for “Morning Part,” West demanded that the alt-rock musician give the award to Beyoncé as an alternative, in an echo of his notorious second with Swift on the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. He warned that such decisions by Grammy voters would alienate “actual artists.”

“As a result of what occurs is,” West mentioned, “while you carry on diminishing artwork and never respecting the craft and smacking folks within the face after they ship monumental feats of music — it’s disrespectful to inspiration.”

Whereas West is not going to carry out at this yr’s Grammys, he’s nonetheless invited to attend as a nominee — which presents a tough downside for the academy if West wins a serious award like album of the yr. Would he use the chance of a speech on dwell tv to make extra inflammatory feedback, both about his private life or concerning the Grammys itself?

As a safeguard for producers of the present, and for CBS, the Grammys’ longtime broadcast community, normal modifying delays are constructed into the present. In 2017, for instance, the Grammy viewers heard Adele blurt out a pissed off profanity after she flubbed the opening of a George Michael tribute; folks watching at dwelling simply heard bleeps.

Joe Coscarelli contributed reporting.