What's Going on With Drake and the Grammys?
Drake removed himself from two categories at the 2022 Grammys, continuing the Canadian rapper's longstanding tension with the awards ceremony and the Recording Academy. Two weeks ago, the Academy announced that Drake would be up for a pair of awards: Best Rap Album for Certified Lover Boy and Best Rap Performance for "Way 2 Sexy," his collaboration with Future and Young Thug. He was not recognized in any "major" categories, such as Album of the Year, Record of the Year, or Song of the Year, according to the New York Times.
Following the news, Drake and his managers asked that he be removed from the two rap categories and Variety reported that his Grammy bio page reflected his request. The Recording Academy did not issue any comments regarding the change.
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Last year, Drake called for the Grammys to be replaced with "something new that we can build up over time and pass on to the generations to come." The move came after his friend The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) failed to earn nominations in 2021, even though he had one of the year's top albums and singles — and performed at the Super Bowl.
"I think we should stop allowing ourselves to be shocked every year by the disconnect between impactful music and these awards and just accept that what once was the highest form of recognition may no longer matter to the artist that exist now and the ones that come after," he wrote in a now-expired Instagram Story. "It's like a relative you keep expecting to fix up but they just won't change their ways. The other day I said @theweeknd was a lock for either album or song of the year along with countless other reasonable assumptions and it just never goes that way. This is a great time for somebody to start something new that we can build up overtime [sic] and pass on to the generations to come."
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In 2019, the year that "God's Plan" won Best Rap Song, he was cut off during his acceptance speech when he said that the Grammys held no value.
"We play an opinion-based sport, not a factual-based sport," he said. "You already won if you have people singing your songs word for word, if they're singing in your hometown. You're already winning, you don't need this right here."