The Problem with the Grammys’ “Urban” Category – Reflection 2

Photo credit: Frederic J. Brown, Getty Images

Tyler the Creator won Best Rap Album for “Igor” at this year’s Grammy Awards… but it wasn’t a rap album.

Igor is Tyler Okonma’s latest solo album under the name “Tyler, The Creator.” It was released in summer 2019 and was arguably his most successful album to date. It featured a ‘genre-bending’ style and more instrumentals and singing than any of his previous work. Genre-wise, I wouldn’t say it fits one single category. There’s a blend of pop, electronic and rap in every track on the album. So why, at the Grammys, did it just win ‘Best Rap Album?’

Tyler says it best himself in a backstage interview. “It sucks that whenever we – guys that look like me – do anything that’s genre-bending or that’s anything they just put it in a rap or ‘urban’ category. I don’t like that ‘urban’ word, it’s just a politically correct way to say the n-word, to me,” he told reporters.

The Grammys have a long history of white, male dominance and black artists have definitely not been treated fairly by the music industry. While there is more diversity in the Grammys now than ever before, with 2020 winners like Lizzo and Anderson .Paak, whiteness still seems to dominate. Billie Eilish won Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist. While she is the youngest person and first woman to win all of the main Grammy categories in one year, she is also wealthy and white.

The issue with the Grammys boxing artists like Tyler, The Creator into ‘rap’ is that they are choosing not to acknowledge their work at the same artistic level they hold to Billie Eilish. In calling the new, creative sound Tyler made with Igor ‘rap,’ the Grammys are really just saying they think it’s ‘black music.’ Igor does things musically that I think are right on par with Eilish’s music, if not better.

When the biggest winners at the Grammys are white again and again, it erases the work of so many amazing artists. The lack of more diverse artists in the award winners lineup each year silences non-white artists in a quiet, seemingly non-malicious way. This silence, however, deprives the music industry of a great deal of amazing content – and shuts down voices that deserve to be heard.