On Jan. 28, the 60th annual Grammy Awards, held in New York City, continued the long and storied tradition of honoring the complete mediocrity that the Recording Academy strives for. Once again, the Grammys chose to elevate bland and predictable pop acts over cutting-edge hip-hop and rap artists. Bruno Mars’ milquetoast pop retread “24 Karat Magic” bested far more worthy contenders like Kendrick Lamar’s “DAMN.” and Childish Gambino’s “Awaken, My Love!” for album of the year, repeating the annual cycle of hip-hop being kept out of the top spot by any means necessary. Once again, the Grammys have marked themselves as the laughingstock of the award season, hopelessly out of touch with anything close to the cultural zeitgeist and seemingly clueless to music’s current form. Disturbingly, the Recording Academy seems to care less about artistic integrity or creativity and more about ensuring a basic standard of whiteness and complacency is maintained in its top honors. If the album of the year winner isn’t an accessible and inoffensive white pop album, it’s an oddball album from white industry veterans the Academy should have honored years ago, like Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories” or Beck’s “Morning Phase.” The last album of the year that can be charitably described as anything close to a daring pick is Outkast’s 2004 LP “Speakerboxx/The Love Below,” a legitimately forward-thinking album that only won because of the runaway success of its lone traditional stab at pop songwriting, the smash hit single “Hey Ya.” Since then, no hip-hop album has ever won album of the year, despite the wealth of fantastic works in the genre and its meteoric rise as the dominant form of popular music. No matter the pick, the logic behind it is always the same. The Grammys are only capable of looking backward, clinging dearly to musical artifacts and outdated preconceptions. Mars’ “24 Karat Magic” is a hollow replica of classic R&B albums like Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life” and Janet Jackson’s “Control”, containing all their flair but none of their punch or immediacy. Traditionalist pop and rock acts always manage to find their way into the top spot, cultural relevance or critical acclaim be damned. Any remotely daring album put out by a Black artist is to be cast aside by the Grammys, regardless of artistic merit.  

Whether it be Frank Ocean’s masterful “Channel Orange” losing to Mumford and Sons’ listless folk-pop album “Babel” or Beyonce’s tour de force, deeply personal “Lemonade” being triumphed by Adele’s superficially impressive but ultimately meaningless “25”, the Recording Academy clearly has a marked preference for white artists and a marked discomfort with any semblance of Black confidence. The most egregious example of this fixation on white artists is when Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “The Heist,” a genuinely mediocre album that nevertheless was popular, likely because it featured a white rapper, won best rap album over Kendrick Lamar’s superlative “good kid, m.a.a.d city.” Clearly, the Recording Academy believes that a modern-day poetic epic about the fragility of life in Compton and the struggles of adolescence is inferior to an album that thinks the verse “when I was in third grade I thought I was gay” is the height of songwriting. While I’m sure many will disagree, citing Macklemore's experiences as more relatable to the average listener, his win shows that the Academy punishes experimentation and rewards safety and radio play.  Macklemore's tone-deaf apology to Lamar and bungled ploy to agree with the consensus opinion that he had been robbed while simultaneously attempting to brag about his Grammy win killed what little credibility he had in the music world. Although the Grammys may attempt to present themselves as kingmakers, they’re anything but. 

Bruno Mars is hardly the first artist chosen for the safe blend of slick production and forgettable lyrics the Academy craves. In the face of a changing industry and culture, the Grammys desperately cling to old memories and trends. How else can you explain U2 and Sting being on stage more often than Jay-Z and Kendrick? Only making matters worse were the comments of Recording Academy president Neil Portnow, who responded to criticism that the Academy was purposely shortchanging female artists by suggesting that women needed to “step up” if they wanted to win awards, according to a Jan. 29 Washington Post article. Considering the 2018 Grammys had a grand total of one award go to a female solo artist, that’s downright idiotic. In the best pop solo performance category, with four women nominated, the Academy chose instead to honor Ed Sheeran’s utterly insipid “Shape of You” instead. The cultural dominance of white men has truly come and gone, especially in the music industry. We are no longer in an era of Dylans and McCartneys and Jaggers, so perhaps it might be time for the self-proclaimed  most prominent music awards to take notice. 

This shell game at the heart of the awards is already starting to be exposed, and artists are catching on to the outstanding mediocrity of the Grammys: This years’ event was boycotted by former winners like Drake, Kanye West and Justin Bieber, and others have signaled their discontent with the banality of the format, according to a Jan. 28 USA Today article. Frank Ocean intentionally failed to submit his 2016 album “Blonde” for eligibility, telling Billboard, "That institution certainly has nostalgic importance, it just doesn’t seem to be representing very well for people who come from where I come from, and hold down what I hold down,” as stated in a Nov. 15, 2016 Billboard article. Ocean is hardly alone in his sentiments. The idea that the Grammys have never truly recognized the best artists and never will is one widely shared in the music industry. It is only a matter of time before the Grammys lose what little relevance they still have, and the entire recording industry will be better off for it.