Jay-Z has long been open about his mixed feelings about the Grammys. In his and wife Beyoncé’s 2018 single “Apesh*t,” he famously rapped, “Tell the Grammys, ‘F*ck that 0 for eight sh*t,’” after being nominated eight times that year, but not winning a single award. But still, he will make his impact on the culture known by maintaining a presence at the ceremony each year.
This year, he was super adamant about his wife receiving her much-due flowers. In an interview with Tidal conducted before this year’s Grammys, Jay said he feels that Bey’s seventh studio album, Renaissance was objectively the Album Of The Year.
“Look what it’s done to the culture. Look how the energy of the world moved,” Jay said. “They play her whole album in the club. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that. The whole entire joint — like, everything?! Every remix is amazing. Everyone’s inspired. It has inspired the world. Every remix is better than the other one. From anybody, we’re just finding these joints out in the street.”
Renaissance, however, did not win the coveted Album Of The Year award, but ended up taking home the award for Best Dance/Electronic Album. Songs from the album won several awards — “Break My Soul” for Best Dance/Electronic Recording, “Plastic Off The Sofa” for Best Traditional R&B Performance and “Cuff It” for Best R&B Song.
The aforementioned wins brought her total number of wins up to 32 Grammys throughout her career, making her the artist with the most Grammy awards.
Over the weekend, Lizzo had a blast at the 2023 Grammy Awards. Not only did she take home Record Of The Year for her song “About Damn Time,” but she also was one of the star performers to play during the event.
“Ok… last thing,” she wrote. “Can I say IM SO PROUD OF MY VOCALS!!! Like… I been working on my voice for the last couple years… some people think I’m a born singer but I’m a rapper first! I wanna thank God & my vocal coach for getting me here.”
Ok… last thing. Can I say IM SO PROUD OF MY VOCALS!!! Like… I been working on my voice for the last couple years… some people think I’m a born singer but I’m a rapper first!
Over the years, many fans have admired Lizzo for both her vocal and breath control — as she is also insanely talented at playing the flute.
She also dedicated her win to Prince and Beyoncé during a tearful speech. “I’m just so proud to be apart of it,” she said. “Not only can people do good, but we are good.”
Continue scrolling for some additional fan reactions to Lizzo’s recent post about her Grammys performance.
A lot happened at the 2023 Grammy Awards this weekend, but the leading narrative throughout the evening was Beyoncé’s chase for history. She entered the night a few wins away from breaking the all-time record for most career Grammys, a record she did end up claiming. Congratulatory messages have poured in since then, and now Beyoncé has gotten one from former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Obama shared a tweet about the record-breaking victory and wrote, “Congratulations @Beyonce for making history. Thank you for blessing us all with the music we live our lives to — the songs that keep us singing and dancing and talking. You deserve all this and more! [hearts emoji] [crown emoji].”
Congratulations @Beyonce for making history. Thank you for blessing us all with the music we live our lives to—the songs that keep us singing and dancing and talking. You deserve all this and more! https://t.co/ZdQotKIpwB
Obama, by the way, is also a Grammy winner: Her first nomination came in 2020, for her Becoming audiobook in the Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Storytelling) category, and she won. Husband and former President Barack Obama also has a couple Grammys to his name, for his audiobooks of Dreams From My Father: A Story Of Race And Inheritance and The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream.
Let’s not waste time, here: the Grammys let us all down by failing to acknowledge Beyoncé’s Renaissance as the Album Of The Year, in favor of the audio equivalent of plain oatmeal. I’m sure Harry Styles is a very nice British boy – distinctive lack of personality aside – but I, and indeed, many, many others fail to see what his album accomplished that Beyoncé’s did not.
Where Styles’ album was a fine example of a middle-of-the-road pop album, taking inspiration from the past 40 years or so of Top 40 radio (I’m putting it nicely – others have argued that it was pale imitation), Renaissance excavated 40 years of Black music history. Beyoncé sought to shine a spotlight on an oft-and-long-overlooked subculture of Black joy and rebellion.
And while the Grammys were certainly happy to make a fuss about her setting the record for most-awarded act ever, shutting her out from Album Of The Year – again – felt like a repudiation, a rejection, of not just Beyoncé’s efforts, but of the validity of the lived experience of the people her album highlighted. It’s a slap in the face.
To add insult to injury, these are the people and this is the scene that has most directly influenced pop music over the past 40 years. All of your faves? They got their swag from queer Black folks. If you ask just about any dance-pop star with a Billboard Hot 100 hit who they were inspired by, you’re going to get the same answers: Britney Spears, Madonna. Well, who inspired Madonna? I’ll wait.
Actually, no I won’t. It was that New York rave culture, where queer Black folks pioneered house and techno, ball culture, and the sampling techniques that permeate modern music today. Look at Sam Smith and Kim Petras winning Best Pop Duo/Group Performance last night. That doesn’t happen without the queer Black community opening the door, at the roots of things, laying the foundation for the branches to flourish.
And Beyoncé, who brought that underground movement to the daylight, went out of her way to acknowledge those contributors to the culture. She put Grace Jones on the album. She nodded to the dozens of collaborators and inspirations for that album in both the liner notes and on her website. As my colleague, Alex Gonzalez, pointed out on Twitter, “Both Harry and Beyoncé noticeably took inspiration from LGBTQ+ aesthetics and culture for their respective album eras… but only one of them actually thanked the queer community.”
And musically, she embraced the breadth and range of those contributions, from disco to neo-soul and everything in between. She displayed versatility and depth and grace and vulnerability and gratitude. She, to quote the kids (who are, again, only quoting Black drag queens), ate and left no crumbs.
Harry’s acceptance speech, oddly enough, inadvertently highlighted just how insultingly tone-deaf this pick really was. “This never happens to people like me,” he said. People like who, Harry? British people? Paul McCartney, Sting, and Adele all have several. Guys who were hand-picked and groomed by some of the biggest producers on the planet to be pop stars from their teens? Hey, have you ever heard of Justin Timberlake?
There is literally no category or tag that you could place on Harry Styles that would put him at a disadvantage in today’s society, let alone at an institution like the Recording Academy, which has had a 100-year history of dropping the ball on honoring Black artists, women, queer artists, or people of color in general at best, and outright racism at worst. Harry is, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, a straight, white, rich dude… the people modern society is set up to serve.
You can’t even blame this on the voting process; in a Variety feature about Academy voters, two anonymous members of this “prestigious” group openly admitted they didn’t vote for Beyoncé “because she always wins.” There was true spite behind this robbery, like the heist in Ocean’s Eleven. It wasn’t just about seeing Harry win – it was about seeing Beyoncé, a Black woman whose commitment to excellence in her craft oozes out of every fiber of her being, who has sacrificed so much to be the best at her craft, who shouldered the burden of representing an entire community in her work… lose.
That is truly heinous.
But, it’s also business as usual in America, where we Black folks are told we have to work twice as hard for half as much. If nothing else, last night’s Grammy result adds one more exhibit to the mountainous pile of evidence for this. It’s all just proof that the Grammys, like most everything else, ain’t really for us – and that’s a shame, because America, and its music, owe us so much.
The Grammys: They sure are long! Shout out to my fellow East Coasters who watched the 2023 Grammys until midnight yesterday and got 45 quality minutes of sleep before getting ready for work this morning.
Within all the length of last night’s show, a lot of things happened. Some awards went to their expected recipients, others went to nominees viewers probably forgot were even up for consideration. Some artists put on spectacular performances, others were certainly at least on stage performing music. Some people got their flowers, others would have settled for just a glimpse of a dried-out petal.
With the dust settling now, all of these events can be generally placed into three categories: winners, losers, and surprises. In fact, the highlights of these goings-on have been categorized thusly… by me… below.
Beyoncé took a slight L when she got stuck in traffic and consequently showed up late to the Grammys. That was profoundly overshadowed, though, by one of the biggest moments of Bey’s career: Renaissance won the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Music Album. In a vacuum, that’s kind of neat, but zoom out: That Grammy was the 32nd of Beyoncé’s career, which is the new all-time Grammy record. The ever-composed Beyoncé was clearly emotional while accepting the award, which goes to show how major the win was not just in music history, but to her personally.
Surprise: Bonnie Raitt/Samara Joy
Bonnie Raitt’s reaction to winning Song of the Year is everyone’s reaction to her winning Song of the Year #Grammyspic.twitter.com/HYcMZK00hc
Beyoncé’s big win wasn’t a shock. You know what was, though? Half of the Grammys in the “big four” categories.
The Best New Artist field was strong and the winner ended up being Samara Joy, a jazz singer who’s a relative unknown when compared to competitors like Anitta, Latto, and Wet Leg.
Then came Song Of The Year.
Up for consideration were songs by Adele, Beyoncé, Bonnie Raitt, DJ Khaled, Gayle, Harry Styles, Kendrick Lamar, Lizzo, Steve Lacy, and Taylor Swift. Looking at that list, clearly, there’s one artist that stands out, and not favorably in terms of contemporary acclaim and pop culture relevance: Raitt. Just like that, though, “Just Like That” won.
Raitt is a legend and a Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductee, but even she was left scratching her head: When her name was called, she gave an open-mouthed look around the room like she just won $100K on a gas station scratcher. That was a fair reaction: “Just Like That” currently has under half a million streams on Spotify. Last year, around 9.5 million people watched the Grammys. So, if those numbers remain similar for this year’s broadcast, that means about 20 times as many people watched “Just Like That” win the award than had actually heard the song before (and that’s being generous by assuming every Spotify listener has only played the song one time).
The Grammys aren’t supposed to be a popularity contest, but cultural relevance should have been a bigger consideration here.
Loser: In Memoriam segment
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Every year, the Recording Academy honors esteemed deceased musicians with its In Memoriam portion of the show. Also every year, they find a way to piss people off. Fans were quick to notice that artists like Gangsta Boo and Aaron Carter weren’t mentioned during the broadcast, which rubbed some viewers the wrong way.
To the Recording Academy’s credit, in a post shared ahead of the show, they shared an In Memoriam list featuring more names than made it onto the broadcast, noting that “some” of them would be included in the video tribute. Carter was on that list, but not the broadcast. They also note that the people on the list all died between January 1, 2022 and December 6, 2022; Boo died on January 1, 2023.
So, the Recording Academy technically has some plausible deniability here, but maybe policies that exclude people who should obviously be named could use some reconsidering.
Winner: Wet Leg
Wet Leg – Alternative Music Album, Alternative Music Performance
Previously, leg was dry. At the Grammys, though, leg was wet: Emerging rock favorites Wet Leg was up for five awards and they took home two of them: Best Alternative Music Performance for “Chaise Longue” and Best Alternative Music Album for Wet Leg.
Harry was one of the evening’s most-nominated artist with seven total nods. He ended the night with a strong winning percentage, too, taking home three awards, most notably picking up Album Of The Year for Harry’s House. That said…
…boy was his performance during the show dull and weird.
He started his rendition of “As It Was” with some backing dancers, all spinning slowly on a rotating platform, like the song’s music video. It was an extremely low-energy environment for a minute or so, all while the relentlessly upbeat song charged on in defiant tonal contrast. It looked as though Styles and company had the stage set up to perform an Adele ballad before switching to “As It Was” seconds before going on. Things didn’t really improve after the intro, either. Styles’ current tour has obviously gone well, as the banner he has hanging in Madison Square Garden indicates, but the watermelon sugar high appears to have worn off since his last arena show.
Winner: Viola Davis
Viola Davis has achieved EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) status. “It has been such a journey, I just EGOT!” pic.twitter.com/YYj4MMJvRg
Congratulations are in order for Viola Davis: She e-got her EGOT! She’s now one of only 18 people to ever do it and it’s thanks in part to last night’s win in the Best Audio Book, Narration, And Storytelling Recording category, for her Finding Me memoir.
Beyoncé was the evening’s leading nominee with nine total nods, but Lamar was right behind her with eight of his own. Despite getting shut out of the main categories, Lamar did well in the hip-hop categories, winning in Best Rap Performance (“The Heart Part 5”), Best Rap Song (“The Heart Part 5”), and Best Rap Album (Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers). Furthermore, he did it all while dressed like Goodwill Kid, M.A.A.D. City.
In the Best R&B Song category, Beyoncé came out on top with “Cuff It.” Another Renaissance track, “Virgo’s Groove,” was up for Best R&B Performance, and while that may have felt like an obvious pick there, Muni Long actually pulled off the upset with “Hrs & Hrs.”
That’s not to say, of course, that Long’s win (her first Grammy victory) is inexcusable. “Hrs & Hrs” is an accomplished track, as it was only the second song by an independent artist to top the Billboard Hot R&B Songs chart, it’s certified platinum, and it achieved a No. 16 peak on the Hot 100. Beating Beyoncé for a Grammy is a tall mountain to scale, so congrats to Long!
Winner: 50th Anniversary Of Hip-Hop Tribute Performance
The Recording Academy put a major focus on honoring hip-hop in 2023, since this year marks the half-century anniversary of the genre’s inception. They went all out with a gargantuan 10-minute performance that spanned eras, featuring stage time from Grandmaster Flash, Rakim, RUN-DMC, Salt-N-Pepa, Future, GloRilla, Lil Baby, Busta Rhymes, De La Soul, Missy Elliott, Method Man, Nelly, and Too Short, among others. If you’re looking for a hip-hop history lesson, the setlist is a terrific starting point.
To her name, Brandi Carlile has racked up 24 Grammy nominations in her lifetime. She’s usually firmly in the Americana and country categories, but this year, she earned her first rock nominations. She actually dominated on that front, with “Broken Horses” winning Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance. While on the surface, Carlile getting rock Grammys might read as off, she performed the track during the broadcast and it was very clearly a rock song, and a pretty good one, too.
Last night, a lot of songs did, but “God Did” was not among them. The DJ Khaled, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, John Legend, and Fridayy song was nominated for Song Of The Year, Best Rap Performance, and Best Rap Song. It won none of those awards.
Then, Khaled and company had to close the show with a performance of the song, which featured Khaled spouting his classic substance-free motivational nuggets. His loud claims of “we the best” or whatever while actual musicians were performing around him fell especially flat, since the Recording Academy just finished declaring on national television that he is in fact not the best.
Loser: Benny Blanco
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Benny Blanco wore that to the 2023 Grammy Awards.
Find the full list of this year’s Grammy nominees and winners here.
Meanwhile, according to TMZ’s sources, it was not Offset who started the fight, which makes sense considering the comments Quavo and Takeoff made over the past year regarding his falling out with the group. While Quavo and Takeoff spoke about “disloyalty,” it seemed that Offset had angered them in some way, leading to their making a joint album without him. Fans have speculated that it was Offset suing their label, Quality Control Music, that set things off; others believe that there was a romantic tryst between Offset and Saweetie, who was previously dating Quavo.
Whatever the reason, many fans were disappointed that the two remaining Migos were unable to reconcile their differences for the tribute. However, it looks like the tribute provided another wedge between them, making a Migos reunion less likely than ever.
Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.
This week saw PinkPantheress and Ice Spice link up and Yves Tumor start a new era. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
PinkPantheress and Ice Spice — “Boy’s A Liar Pt. 2”
PinkPantheress and Ice Spice are two of the most meteorically rising stars of the past few years, so it makes sense that they’d link up on something. They did last week on “Boy’s A Liar Pt. 2,” a new take on PinkPantheress’ tune that sees Ice’s laid-back style play well with the upbeat song.
GloRilla — “Internet Trolls”
Online haters are a real consideration for high-profile musicians these days, and GloRilla gave them a piece of her mind on “Internet Trolls.” She says on the track, “Sometimes, I think they be forgettin’ the internet a fairytale / Teach that n**** for the people, but in person, he a b*tch / They be gangster on the booth, but in them papers be a snitch.”
Caroline Polachek — “Blood And Butter”
Polachek unveiled the tracklist for her upcoming album Desire, I Want To Turn Into You last week, including a song featuring Grimes and Dido. Beyond that, though, Polachek is on her own, like on new single “Blood And Butter,” on which she continues testing boundaries with off-kilter percussion and even some bagpipes.
Skrillex and Nai Barghouti — “Xena”
Skrillex has been getting after it this year, with new releases seemingly every week. That includes last week, when he dropped the Nai Barghouti collaboration “Xena,” of which Uproxx’s Lexi Lane notes, “Barghouti’s sole vocals open the song before the fierce electronic beat is added as a layer — and then eventually gets an instrumental break to shine.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra — “Layla”
Unknown Mortal Orchestra is currently readying V, which will be their first album in about four-and-a-half years when it comes out next month. They announced the double-LP last week, when they also shared “Layla,” a breezy number that pulls influence from Hawaiian music.
Yves Tumor — “Echolalia”
Yves Tumor is approaching Fiona Apple territory with the title of his newly announced album, Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds). Uproxx’s Alex Gonzalez describes the new, more concisely titled single “Echolalia” as “a dreamy, psychedelic track on which he recalls an intoxicating love.”
Lil Keed — “Long Way To Go”
It’s been nearly a year since Lil Keed died at 24 years old in 2022. At the time, he was on the rise and working on a new album, and now, some posthumous material is making its way out into the world. “Long Way To Go” was shared last week, and in a statement, his mother said, “This song holds a special place in my heart and as you guys will see it will reflect on many aspects of Keed’s journey here on Earth.”
NLE Choppa — “Champions”
The mood in Memphis is sour right now following the death of Tyre Nichols, and Memphis native NLE Choppa is taking action, like when he led a recent peaceful protest. He also addressed the situation on “Champions,” on which he raps, “I hate to struggle but it make me harder / I made it far but I wanna go farther / This not for me / This for my son and my daughter / My family tree in that order.”
Dreamville, JID, and Lute — “Ma Boy”
It turns out that Dreamville will be bringing the Creed III soundtrack to life. That reveal was made last week and the label also shared the first look at the OST: JID and Lute’s “Ma Boy,” a lively number fit to serve as pre-fight hype music.
Karol G and Romeo Santos — “X Si Volvemos”
Karol G’s upcoming album Mañana Será Bonito is set to arrive soon, and last week, she held fans over with the Romeo Santos collaboration “X Si Volvemos.” Uproxx’s Alex Gonzalez notes that on the song, “the two have no regrets about parting ways, but with their unmatched sexual chemistry, they can’t resist coming back to each other.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Sad Batman is back, y’all. One of the more fascinating parts of the past decade of pop culture is how Ben Affleck tends to look pretty “over it” most of the time. I think, maybe, that’s simply how his face is? It’s entirely possible. I’m similarly afflicted but fortunately do not have people scrutinizing my every move like Affleck, who gets meme’d every time he’s spotted carrying around Dunkin’ with a sad face. See, he loves Dunkin,’ so really, I think that is simply his resting expression.
Well, Ben brought that face to the Grammys, where he supported his new bride, JLo, which was all well and good, but boy, he seemingly wanted to be anywhere else. He looked completely uncomfortable while barely vibing to the music. The two have made clear that they are very much in love and have Gigli firmly in the rear view mirror, but people could not help but notice that Ben would probably rather be at home.
No matter how he actually felt, though, the verdict was pretty clear. The dude looked “miserable” and like he wanted to vanish into thin air.
however bad of a day you’re having, I promise you’re not as miserable as Ben Affleck at the Grammys right now pic.twitter.com/OQxA54H9P1
The 2023 Grammys were last night (February 5), and watching the broadcast, the event appeared to go off without incident. However, during the “In Memoriam” segment, some fans couldn’t help but notice a few notable musicians were not mentioned during the show.
Some, for instance, wondered why Aaron Carter, who died last November, wasn’t included in the tribute.
in memoriam of aaron carter – you deserved more. more recognition, love & time. thank you for the music that got me through my childhood, shaped me as a person & why i wanted to work in music. i forever love you. #aaroncarter#GRAMMYspic.twitter.com/JOt45YujMG
Hey #GRAMMYs you forgot about a few huge losses this past year. Jeremiah Green – a founding member of #modestmouse & Mimi Parker of @lowtheband …..over 30 yrs of beautiful music ! Gheesh
Some also noticed that Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins wasn’t mentioned, but since he died shortly before last year’s show, he was honored then.
Hours before the program started, the Recording Academy actually published an In Memoriam post on its website. In the introduction, they explain, “The following is a list of artists and industry professionals the music community lost from Jan. 1, 2022 to Dec. 6, 2022. The 2022 Grammys telecast on CBS featured an In Memoriam segment highlighting some of these individuals via a video tribute, and all of these individuals who died prior to its print date are included in the official 2023 Grammys program book.”
Many of the artists missing from the broadcast are included on this list, but not Green, who died on December 31, 2022, outside of the apparent eligibility window for the list. That also explains the absence of Gangsta Boo, whose death was on January 1, 2023.
The Grammy Awards are the Super Bowl of music. Every year the biggest recording stars and musicians gathered to celebrate that year’s releases, and what would this year’s celebration be without Lizzo?
Before the “Special” singer had even stepped foot into the Crypto.com arena, she had already been declared a winner for “About Damn Time (Purple Disco Machine Remix)” for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical. Although the flutist wasn’t in the building to deliver a speech, her collaborator Purple Disco Machine stepped in. However, she was blown away after finding out the news via Twitter as she made her way to the event.
Well, Lizzo’s tardiness was not in vain. Wearing a custom salamander orange Dolce and Gabbana floral semi-hooded overcoat, Lizzo quickly walked the event’s red carpet, stopping in front of the photographers’ station to capture the radiant look. Underneath the jacket, Lizzo sported a pumpkin orange rhinestoned accented corset with matching support straps and a simple floor-length skirt of the same material.
The look is a metaphor for the singer’s latest album, Special. Surrounding herself with flowers, she’s prepared for whatever happens during the ceremony, even if it doesn’t go in her favor.
Lizzo has shared before during an interview on the Howard Stern Show that she initially felt the album would be overlooked because of the steep competition. Still, she managed to pull in nominations for Record Of The Year, Album Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Best Pop Solo Performance, Best Pop Vocal Album, and indirectly Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical.
Covered in flowers and with her partner Myke by her side, we’re sure she already feels like a winner.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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