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A record-breaking 2,400 people have joined the Recording Academy as part of the organization’s 2023 new member class. Fully half of the new class is composed of people of color, while 46% are under the age of 40 and 37% are women. The Academy calls these statistics “a demonstration of the Academy’s commitment to remaking its overall membership.”
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The Academy further said that the 2,400 new members includes 1,700 new voting members and 700 new professional members (people who work in the industry but aren’t involved in the creation of recordings). This brings the total current membership to about 14,000 – 11,000 voting members and nearly 3,000 professional members.
The Recording Academy’s membership model is community-driven and peer-reviewed to create a more diverse and engaged membership base. Since implementing this new membership model in 2019, people of color have gone from comprising 24% of the Academy’s total membership to 38%. The percentage of Academy members who are women has also increased in that time frame, albeit at a more modest rate, from 26% to 30%.
“I’m proud as our organization continues to evolve and build a membership body that reflects the diverse talents and backgrounds that make up our music community,” Harvey Mason, jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, said in a statement. “Our commitment to diversity and inclusivity, however, is an ongoing effort. While we celebrate our progress, we also acknowledge that there’s still more work that must be done. Our members play a crucial role in everything we do, so representation is integral to our mission of supporting and uplifting music makers.”
The Recording Academy reports that the new member class is 50% people of color, 37% white or Caucasian and 13% unknown. The 50% people of color statistic breaks down like this: Black or African American, 28%; Hispanic or Latin, 10%; Asian or Pacific Islander, 5%; South Asian, 2%; Middle Eastern or North African, 1%; and Indigenous or Alaskan native, less than 1%. Four percent replied that they prefer to self-describe.
In terms of gender, 54% of the new member class is male, 37% is female, 8% is unknown and 1% is non-binary. Less than 1% replied that they prefer to self-describe.
In terms of age, 46% of the new class is under 40, 40% is over 40 and 14% is unknown.
All of these numbers refer to total members — which encompasses both voting members and professional members.
The Recording Academy also specifically asked voting members in the new member class to indicate which genres they are most aligned with. (They could choose more than one genre, so the totals exceed 100%.) Pop leads, as expected, with 41%, followed by R&B (29%), rock (23%), rap (22%), jazz (21%), alternative (21%), global music (17%), classical (15%), dance/electronic (15%), contemporary instrumental (13%), American roots music (12%), gospel/Christian (12%), Latin (12%), country (11%), visual media (10%) and seven other genres that each had less than 10%.
Jazz and classical rank higher than their market share would indicate. Latin and country, two of the hottest genres of recent years, rank lower than their market share would indicate; notably, the Grammy nominations that were announced on Nov. 10 were light on Latin and country representation in the Big Four categories. Latin was shut out completely in those marquee categories, while country was represented by just a pair of best new artist nominees: Jelly Roll and The War & Treaty (and that husband-and-wife duo is primarily associated with Americana). This brought criticism from people in the Latin and country fields.
Full statistics surrounding the demographics of the new class can be found here.
The Recording Academy reports that it’s 98% of the way toward its goal of adding 2,500 women voting members by 2025. It expects to achieve this milestone next year, a year ahead of schedule.
The final round of voting for the 66th Annual Grammy Awards extends from Dec. 14 until Jan. 4, 2024. All voting members, including those welcomed in the 2023 new class, are eligible to vote.
In addition to voting in the Grammy Awards process, members can submit product for Grammy consideration, propose amendments to Grammy rules, run for a Recording Academy board position or committee, vote in chapter elections and more.
For more information on the Recording Academy’s membership process and requirements, visit here.
11/14/2023
We’ll find out on Feb. 4, 2024.
11/14/2023
In addition to being Grammy-nominated for album of the year for her own album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, Lana Del Rey is featured on two albums that are competing with her album in that category – Taylor Swift’s Midnights and Jon Batiste’s World Music Radio.
Likewise, in addition to being nominated as a member of boygenius for the record, Phoebe Bridgers is featured on SZA’s SOS.
In all but a few years since 2006, this would have meant that Del Rey and Bridgers would have multiple album of the year nods this year. But this year, the Recording Academy added a baseline for receiving an album of the year nomination. Participants must contribute to 20% of an album’s playing time. This applies to featured artists as well as songwriters, producers, engineers, mixers and mastering engineers.
Six of this year’s eight album of the year nominees have featured artists, but none of the featured artists met that 20% requirement. So, these featured artists won’t be in line to win a Grammy even if the album wins, but they will get a certificate and might get a shout-out in the winner’s acceptance speech.
(Nigerian musician Sean Kuti, the youngest son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, is featured on two of the 14 tracks on Janelle Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure, but that didn’t quite meet the standard.)
This year’s two other two album of the year nominees – boygenius’ The Record and Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts – had no featured artists.
Here’s how the Grammy rules in this category have changed over the years. From 2006-16, all credited featured artists on the winning album won Grammys. From 2017-20, the baseline requirement was 33% of an album’s playing time, which some thought was too restrictive. From 2021-22, all featured artists were again eligible to win. This year, a baseline was re-added, but one that was more liberal than the previous one – 20%.
During the years when there was no baseline requirement, the featured artists on Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters, Swift’s Fearless, Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories and Batiste’s We Are all won Grammys.
Here are the featured artists on this year’s six album of the year nominees that had featured artists.
Jon Batiste’s World Music Radio
Jon Batiste got some very good news on Friday (Nov. 10). World Music Radio, his follow-up to We Are, which won album of the year at the Grammy Awards two years ago, was nominated in that same category.
The victory for We Are two years ago surprised most observers, as did the nomination this year for World Music Radio. The album has so far peaked at No. 104 on the Billboard 200.
In the Grammys’ 66-year history, 20 follow-ups to album of the year winners have been nominated for that same award. Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Adele each did it multiple times.
The follow-ups to several other recent album of the year winners have been nominated in their own right, including Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever, her follow-up to When We All Asleep, Where Do We Go?, and Taylor Swift’s evermore, her follow-up to Folklore. (The fact that the number of nominees in each of the Big Four categories expanded from five to eight in 2018, and went as high as 10 before dropping back to eight again this year, is one of the reasons for this, along with Grammy voters’ longtime tendency to stick with a familiar favorite.)
Note: Before 1970, artists often released multiple albums in the same Grammy eligibility year. In some cases, the albums we show were not the artists’ direct follow-up albums, but they were released in the following eligibility year. For example, Barbra Streisand‘s follow-up to the Grammy-winning The Barbra Streisand Album was The Second Barbra Streisand Album, which was released in the same eligibility year (1963). In the following eligibility year, she released The Third Album, followed by People. The latter got an album of the year nod. Since it was the very next year after she won, we’re counting it. It doesn’t seem fair to leave artists out of the conversation just because at that time, albums were released at what we would now consider a torrid pace.
Meanwhile, we’re still waiting for the follow-up albums to three album of the year winners – Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic and Harry Styles’ Harry’s House.
Here are all the follow-ups (or following year releases) to album of the year Grammy winners that were nominated in that same category. We show the title of the follow-up that was nominated in this category, mention the Grammy winner for album of the year that it followed, and reveal how this follow-up did in the category.
Henry Mancini’s More Music From Peter Gunn (1959)
SZA is the leader in the 2024 Grammy nominations, with nine nods. She is followed on the leaderboard by Phoebe Bridgers, engineer/mixer Serban Ghenea and R&B star Victoria Monét, with seven nods each; and Jack Antonoff, Jon Batiste, Boygenius, Brandy Clark, Miley Cyrus, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift, with six each.
Five artists – Swift, Batiste, Cyrus, SZA and Rodrigo – are nominated in each of the “Big Three” categories: album, record and song of the year. Three more – boygenius, Eilish and Lana Del Rey – are nominated in two of the “Big Three” categories.
Solo women account for six of the eight nominations for both record and album of the year. A trio of three women (boygenius) and one man (Batiste) round out the nominations in both of those categories. There’s more balance in best new artist, but women are still ahead. That category has four women, three men and one married couple (The War and Treaty).
Several acts made Grammy history with this year’s nominations, which were announced on Friday (Nov. 10). With her smash “Anti-Hero,” Swift becomes the first songwriter in Grammy history to amass seven nods for song of the year; she had been tied with Paul McCartney and Lionel Richie with six nods each.
With her album Midnights, Swift ties Barbra Streisand for the most nods in this category (six) by a female artist. Streisand’s album of the year nominations spanned 24 years (1963-86). True to her name, Swift achieved the feat more swiftly: Her album of the year nods span just 15 years (2009-23).
With her smash “Flowers” nominated for record of the year, Cyrus and her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, become just the third parent and child to each receive record of the year nods, following the Sinatras (Frank and Nancy) and the Coles (Nat King and Natalie). Billy Ray Cyrus has received two record of the year nods – for “Achy Breaky Heart” and “Old Town Road,” his collab with Lil Nas X. Frank Sinatra amassed seven record of the year nods; Nancy had one, for “Somethin’ Stupid,” a 1967 collab with her father. Nat King Cole had one, for “Ramblin’ Rose” (1962); Natalie also had one for “Unforgettable” (1991). (Nat wasn’t nominated for that silky, studio-assembled collab because his part had been recorded many years earlier.)
With her hypnotic ballad “What Was I Made For?,” Eilish becomes the first artist in Grammy history to receive four record of the year nods before turning 22. (She’ll reach that age on Dec. 18.) She won for “Bad Guy” (2019) and “Everything I Wanted” (2020) and was nominated for “Happier Than Ever” (2021).
Rodrigo becomes the first artist to sweep nominations in each of the Big Three categories with both of her first two studio albums since Eilish. This is also the second time Rodrigo has been nominated alongside one of her childhood idols, Swift, for album of the year; Sour competed with Swift’s Evermore two years ago (with Jon Batiste’s We Are taking the prize).
Jelly Roll, who turns 39 in December, is the oldest solo artist nominated for best new artist since Andrea Bocelli, who was 40 when he was nominated 25 years ago. Jelly Roll won the CMA Award for new artist of the year on Wednesday (Nov. 8). He has a chance to become just the fourth artist to win both of these awards, following LeAnn Rimes, Carrie Underwood and Zac Brown Band.
Jelly Roll’s nomination, and another for Americana duo The War and Treaty (who were also up for the CMA new artist of the year award), was the good news for country in the Big Four categories this year. The bad news is that such format leaders as Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs and Lainey Wilson were shut out in the marquee categories. Combs’ failure to receive a record of the year nod for “Fast Car” is especially surprising; Tracy Chapman’s original version of the song was nominated for record and song of the year 35 years ago.
Victoria Monét is the only best new artist nominee who is nominated in another “Big Four” category; her “On My Mama” was a surprise nominee for record of the year. The other nominees for best new artist are Gracie Abrams, Fred again.., Ice Spice, Jelly Roll, Coco Jones, Noah Kahan and The War and Treaty.
Jones won best new artist at the BET Awards on June 25. Ice Spice won in that same category at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 12.
Surprisingly, Lainey Wilson, who has amassed seven CMA Awards in the last two years, was passed over for a Grammy best new artist nod. (She was entered and eligible.)
Jack Antonoff has two nominations for album of the year (for co-producing albums by Swift and Del Rey) and song of the year (for co-writing songs by those same artists). Given that, it’s not surprising that he’s nominated for producer of the year, non-classical for the fifth consecutive year. The other nominees in that category are Dernst “D’Mile” Emile II (his second nod in a row), Hit-Boy (his second nod in three years) and first-time nominees Metro Boomin and Daniel Nigro.
The slate of nominees for songwriter of the year, non-classical is completely different from last year’s inaugural slate. Edgar Barrera (who has won 20 Latin Grammys), Jessie Jo Dillon, Shane McAnally, Theron Thomas and Justin Tranter are this year’s nominees. (Amy Allen, Nija Charles, Tobias Jesso Jr., The-Dream and Laura Veltz were nominated last year.)
The trend of songwriting by committee appears to have stalled, at least based on this year’s voting for song of the year. Four of the eight nominees in that category were written by two-person teams. Three others were written by three-person teams. Only one was written by a four-person team.
Three of this year’s album of the year nominees – Swift’s Midnights, Rodrigo’s GUTS and Cyrus’ Endless Summer Vacation – are also nominated for best pop vocal album. Two – SZA’s SOS and Janelle Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure – are also nominated for best progressive R&B album. Two more – Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd and boygenius’ the record – are nominated for best alternative music album. The eighth album of the year nominee is Batiste’s World Music Radio, which wasn’t nominated in a genre album category.
According to the Academy, boygenius — which consists of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus — is the first group to receive six nominations in one year since 2012, when fun. and Mumford & Sons each accomplished the feat. (The Academy is not counting Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, a duo, which had seven nominations the following year.)
In an odd twist, Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” from Barbie was nominated for song of the year but not record of the year; many would have predicted the opposite outcome. Two songs from Barbie are up for song of the year, the other being Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” Barbie is the third film soundtrack to spawn two song of the year nominees, following The Lion King (both in the same year, 1994) and the most recent iteration of A Star Is Born (in successive years, 2018 and 2019).
Another sign of Barbie’s potency: Four of the five nominees for best song written for visual media were from the film. (The only non-Barbie song in the running is Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.) For all that, Barbie: The Album was passed over for an album of the year nod.
The Grammys added three new categories this year: best pop dance recording, best alternative jazz album and best African music performance. David Guetta has two of the five nominees for best pop dance recording. The French superstar is nominated for “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” a collab with Anne-Marie & Coi Leray, and “One in a Million,” a collab with Bebe Rexha.
Bruce Springsteen’s Only the Strong Survive and Rickie Lee Jones’ Pieces of Treasure are both nominated for best traditional pop vocal album, which has broadened its focus in recent years. It’s no longer just the home for Michael Bublé albums (though he’s welcome there too).
Trevor Noah, who has hosted the Grammy telecast the last three years, is nominated for best comedy album for I Wish You Would. (The 2024 Grammy host has not yet been announced.)
There are just three nominees for best música urbana album and best opera recording. That’s because Grammy rules specify that “each category shall have at least 40 distinct artist entries. If a category receives between 25 and 39 entries, only three recordings will receive nominations in that year.” These two categories had 37 and 28 entries, respectively.
Grammy rules also specify “in the event of a tie in the nominations, there shall be no more than six and no less than three nominations in these categories.” Despite that rule, there are seven nominations in three categories: best folk album, best global music performance and best classical compendium.
This year’s eligibility period ran from Oct. 1, 2022, through Sept. 15, 2023. The final round of Grammy voting, which will determine the winners, will take place Dec. 14 through Jan. 4, 2024. According to the Academy, nearly 16,000 eligible entries were submitted for Grammy consideration. More than 11,000 Recording Academy voting members vote during the awards process.
The Grammys will be presented on Feb. 4, 2024, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Prior to the 3.5-hour telecast, the Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony will be held at the adjoining Peacock Theater at 12:30 p.m. PT and will stream live on live.Grammy.com and the Recording Academy’s YouTube Channel.
The 66th annual Grammy Awards will be produced by Fulwell 73 Productions for the Recording Academy. Ben Winston, Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins are executive producers.
Milli Vanilli made Grammy history in 1990 – in the worst possible way – when they became the first and only act to have their Grammy revoked. They had won best new artist at the February 1990 ceremony, but lost it nine months later after it was revealed that they didn’t sing a note on their smash album Girl You Know It’s True. (They did provide the look and the stage moves, which were probably just as important in their case.) The disgraced duo may find Grammy redemption this year: A music doc about them, Milli Vanilli, is among 94 films vying for a nomination for best music film.
As always, it’s a very competitive category. Two films that were on the Oscars’ shortlist of 15 films eligible for best documentary feature (though neither wound up with a nomination) are being considered here — David Bowie’s Moonage Daydream and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen: A Journey, A Song.
At least 20 acts who have albums contending for album of the year nominations are also vying for best music film nods, including several for films that are direct tie-ins to their album counterparts. Boygenius’ The Film is linked to the trio’s The Record. Other films with closely linked eligible albums include Miley Cyrus’ Endless Summer Vacation (Backyard Sessions) and Kelsea Ballerini’s Rolling Up the Welcome Mat (A Short Film),
Three past winners in this category are on the entry list again this year. Duran Duran, whose Duran Duran won in 1984, is a contender with A Hollywood High. U2, the 1995 winners for Zoo TV: Live From Sydney, are entered with Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming with Dave Letterman; Foo Fighters, the 2012 winners for Back & Forth, are entered with Preparing Music for Concerts.
The last two winners in this category were Various Artists films – Summer of Soul and Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story. Fifteen Various Artists albums are on the entry list this year, including several that document various music scenes: San Francisco Sounds: A Place in Time, Meet Me in the Bathroom (a journey through the New York music scene of the early 2000s), If These Walls Could Sing (the story of Abbey Road studios in London), and two that center on hip-hop: Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip-Hop and Mixtape.
More than a dozen of the films were recorded live. Longtime pals and tour-mates Elton John and Billy Joel are represented with films shot at stadium shows on opposite sides of the country – Elton John Live: Farewell From Dodger Stadium and Joel’s Live at Yankee Stadium, a remixed and reedited version of a film documenting The Piano Man’s 1990 show at the legendary venue. Joel’s original film, produced and directed by Jon Small, received at 1992 nomination in this category. Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium is nominated for a Primetime Emmy for outstanding variety special (live).
Other live films in the mix include A$AP Rocky’s Amazon Music Live With A$AP Rocky, Ellie Goulding’s Monumental: Ellie Goulding at Kew Gardens, Guns N’ Roses’ Live in New York, Imagine Dragons’ Live in Vegas, Carole King’s Home Again – Live From Central Park, New York City, May 26, 1973, Kendrick Lamar’s Live From Paris: The Big Steppers Tour, PJ Morton’s Watch the Sun Live: The Mansion Sessions, The 1975’s At Their Very Best: Live From Madison Square Garden, Sam Smith’s Live at the Royal Albert Hall, Stormzy’s Live in London: This Is What We Mean, The Weeknd’s Live at SoFi Stadium and the multi-artist Encanto Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
A sobering number of the contenders are by artists who, like Bowie and Cohen, are deceased. These include Louis Armstrong’s Louis Armstrong’s Black and Blues, Whitney Houston’s I Go to the Rock: The Gospel Music of Whitney Houston, Little Richard’s I Am Everything, Tupac Shakur’s Dear Mama and Donna Summer’s Love to Love You, Donna Summer.
Milli Vanilli isn’t the only Billboard 200-topping group with one deceased member on the entry list – Wham! (Wham!) and TLC (TLC Forever) are also in the running.
EDM is well-represented, with Diplo’s Apple Music Sessions: Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley, Zedd’s Clarity Orchestral Concert Documentary and Illenium’s Starfall.
Jelly Roll, a likely best new artist nominee (and in several other categories) is on the entry list with Save Me.
Tanya Tucker featuring Brandi Carlile’s The Return of Tanya Tucker, is also entered. The two stars shared two Grammys four years ago – best country album for Tucker’s While I’m Livin’ (which Carlile co-produced) and best country song for “Bring My Flowers Now,” which they co-wrote with Phil Hanseroth and Tim Hanseroth.
Selena Gomez is a contender with Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me. “Calm Down,” Gomez’s collaboration with Rema, would have been a sure-fire record of the year contender — but it’s not eligible because it came out before the start of the eligibility period.
Dionne Warwick, whose 1964 classic “Walk on By” is prominently sampled in Doja Cat’s Hot 100-topping “Paint the Town Red,” is a contender with Don’t Make Me Over, which draws its title from her 1962 breakthrough hit.
What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears looks at the band that had one of the biggest albums of 1969 (their self-titled set topped the Billboard 200 for seven weeks and won the Grammy for album of the year), but quickly faded.
More films by or about artists that are in contention this year include Travis Scott’s Circus Maximus, Jason Isbell’s Running With Our Eyes Closed (Music Box), Lizzo’s Love, Lizzo, Ed Sheeran’s The Sum of It All, Kenny Wayne Shepard’s Trouble Is…25: The Film, Andrea Bocelli, Matteo Bocelli and Virginia Bocelli’s A Bocelli Family Christmas, Wynonna Judd’s Between Hell & Hallelujah, Keke Palmer’s Big Boss and Chris Stapleton’s Kentucky Rising.
Drake has been absent from the Grammy Awards mix lately, but that drought appears to be over as the 6 God has offered up his joint album with 21 Savage, Her Loss, for consideration in several categories.
Billboard has confirmed that Her Loss was submitted for album of the year and best rap album for the 2024 awards show — news first reported by The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday (Oct. 11) — while the songs “Rich Flex” and “Spin Bout U” were offered up in categories including record of the year, song of the year for both, best rap performance (“Rich Flex”), best rap song (“Rich Flex”) and best melodic rap performance (“Spin Bout U”). Drake also could earn further nominations for his collaborations on Travis Scott’s “Meltdown” and Young Thug’s “Oh U Want,” which are both entered for both rap song and best rap performance.
Her Loss was released in November 2022 and qualifies for the Feb. 4, 2024, Grammys because it falls into an eligibility period that opened on Oct. 1, 2022, and ran through Sept. 15, 2023; balloting for first-round voting for those awards opened on Wednesday, with nominations slated for announcement on Nov. 10.
Billboard has reached out to Drake and 21 Savage’s reps for comment.
Drake has criticized the Grammys in the past and withdrew his rap noms for the 2022 awards, with his management asking the Recording Academy to remove him from nominee consideration on the final-found balloting for 2022’s 64th annual awards in April 2022, a request the Academy honored. He also did not submit his 2022 Honestly, Nevermind album or any of its singles for consideration at this year’s Grammys in February. He did, however, share a best melodic rap performance trophy for his guest spot on Future’s “Wait For U” from the latter’s I Never Liked You album.
In 2020, Drake criticized the Grammys after The Weeknd (who now goes by his birth name, Abel Tesfaye) received no nominations for his After Hours album. “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,” Drake said in an Insta story at the time. “It’s like a relative you keep expecting to fix up but they just won’t change their ways.”
Drake’s latest album, For All the Dogs, was released Oct. 6 and would be eligible for the 2025 Grammys.
Last December, the Recording Academy convened a listening session of artists, label executives and stakeholders both in the United States and across Africa to discuss the rising influence of music coming from the continent. The meeting, which lasted several hours, was a key part of the process that led to the addition of a category that will be presented for the first time at the 66th Grammy Awards on Feb. 4: best African music performance.
“There’s a threshold that you like to see for a genre of music before it actually could make for a healthy category,” says academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr., who led the meeting alongside global music genre manager Shawn Thwaites. “When you talk about music coming from Africa, you’re seeing Afrobeats grow, you’re seeing amapiano and other genres coming out of the continent over the last three to five years. That started the discussions around, ‘Is it the right time?’ ”
The new category reflects the exploding commercial and cultural appeal of music by African artists in the United States. Its growth over the past few years has been almost linear: Davido’s 2017 single “Fall” was the first Nigerian song to be certified gold in the United States by the RIAA in 2020; Wizkid and Tems’ “Essence” became the first Afropop song to reach the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 in 2021; Burna Boy’s Love, Damini debuted at No. 14 on the Billboard 200 in 2022, becoming the highest-charting Afro-fusion album in chart history; and in May, Rema and Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down” became the first song to ever top both the U.S. Afrobeats Songs and Pop Airplay charts and peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100. (“Calm Down” was released too early to be eligible.)
“I don’t think currently there’s better or more advanced music being made anywhere outside the continent,” says Seni Saraki, CEO and editor in chief of The NATIVE Networks, the Lagos, Nigeria-based media and content company that launched a joint venture with Def Jam in September 2022. “From what we call Afrobeats — which is, really, just popular music from Nigeria — through amapiano, the rap music, Afropop, I genuinely think this is some of the most exciting music in the world right now. And the academy is becoming cognizant of that.”
The new category is also an attempt to address some of the controversy that has arisen around the global music album award, renamed from best world music album in 2020 due to “connotations of colonialism,” but still seen as little more than a catchall for non-Western music. As the music industry has itself become more global, the academy recognized that the time had come to offer a home for music from the African continent. But it also goes beyond the popularity of Afrobeats, which itself is more of an umbrella term: The academy listed some 30 different genres that could qualify for the category, including alté, fuji and high life.
“People know about Afrobeats and they’re learning about amapiano, but they don’t realize there are so many other genres on the continent that are underserved, and they can’t just be put in a bulk category called ‘world music,’ ” says Tina Davis, president of EMPIRE, which has invested heavily in African music and artists. “And much respect to the Recording Academy because they actually took the time to want to find out. [Mason] went to the continent to just learn more about it.”
The industry has also taken notice. In the past few years, an explosion of new signings, joint ventures and licensing deals for African artists and labels from U.S.-based companies and distributors has brought a new generation of stars like Rema, Asake and Ayra Starr to join the continent’s established hit-makers. “There was a time a few years ago when I was at RCA and it seemed like we were the only ones on it,” says Def Jam chairman/CEO Tunji Balogun, who signed Tems and worked closely with Wizkid and Davido while an A&R executive at RCA and has since signed Adekunle Gold and Stonebwoy to Def Jam. “Now every week, there’s another label signing someone. The budgets are open.”
“I think you see more labels paying attention to it, you see the marketplace paying more attention to it; there’s a spotlight on it,” RCA co-president John Fleckenstein says. “The Grammys are the big leagues of awards, one of those artistic validations that many artists dream about. It’s a bit of an awakening that we are more global than we’ve ever been.”
There is, however, a little reticence around the new category; in the past, artists from genres like hip-hop, R&B and some of the Latin sectors have looked at the genre categories as boxes that merely nod to their music while gatekeeping them from the more prestigious general-field categories like song, record or album of the year. Further, a category called best African music performance, while welcome, is itself incredibly broad, covering a continent with 54 countries and 1.4 billion people.
“It’s a really important moment for the Grammys,” says Temi Adeniji, managing director of Warner Music Africa and senior vp of strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa. “But then the next step is, how do you actually roll this thing out? Even regionally — East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa — it would be great to see a diversity of nominees, and that would reflect a real understanding from the Grammys of how large the continent is and how diverse the sounds are that are coming out.”
Talks of additional categories around African music, as well as a possible African Grammys, could be part of a future that Mason says this category is just the start of. “We want to serve music people, regardless of where they are,” he says. “I don’t know what that means yet, but we will continue to try and make sure that we are reaching as many music people regardless of their geography.”
The Potential Nominees?
Five songs that are in strong contention for a nod for the inaugural best African music performance Grammy.
Wizkid feat. Ayra Starr, “2 Sugar” (Starboy/RCA)
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Following the crossover success of his “Essence” (featuring Tems) was this breakout hit from the Nigerian superstar’s More Love, Less Ego album, featuring a powerful vocal from Starr, who is herself blossoming into a major force in African music.
Libianca, “People” (5K/RCA)
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With an arresting, emotional vocal performance, the 22-year-old Cameroonian American singer — who previously appeared on season 21 of The Voice — has captivated fans and the industry alike. “People” spawned remixes by artists such as Ayra Starr, Omah Lay and Becky G on the way to a long-running No. 2 peak on the U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart.
Davido feat. Musa Keys, “Unavailable” (Davido Music Worldwide/RCA)
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The lead single from one of the year’s best albums in any genre, “Unavailable” showcases Davido at his irresistible best, combining Magicsticks’ amapiano production with a slick verse from South Africa’s Musa Keys to craft one of 2023’s more enduring anthems.
Adekunle Gold feat. Zinoleesky, “Party No Dey Stop” (Def Jam)
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Insistent, urgent and eminently catchy, Gold’s debut Def Jam single blends the street melodies of fellow Nigerian Zinoleesky with his own knack for songwriting for a club banger with substance. It’s aspirational yet relatable, much like the album on which it appears.
Asake feat. Olamide, “Amapiano” (YBNL/EMPIRE)
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Asake’s meteoric rise over the past few years led to a headlining slot at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in September. This track, alongside label boss and Nigerian music legend Olamide, is among his best, celebrating his trademark amapiano vibe and orchestral backing vocals, yet elevating both artists.
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
As R&B superstar SZA has continued to ascend to the highest levels of popular music’s stratosphere over the past year — No. 1 hits, festival headlining slots, A-list collaborations, raves from critics and peers — her résumé still lacks a key item: major Grammy success. While SZA has been nominated for 15 Grammys — an impressive number, considering that as of the most recent ceremony, she still only had one full-length album to her name — she has just one win: in the best pop/duo group performance category, for her guest turn on Doja Cat’s crossover smash, “Kiss Me More.”
That seems likely to change at the 2024 Grammys, following the December 2022 release of her SOS, one of the most universally lauded albums of the past year. Not only did it draw near-unanimous praise, it also brought SZA to a new level of commercial dominance: SOS topped the Billboard 200 for 10 nonconsecutive weeks, with all 23 of its tracks hitting the Billboard Hot 100 — including breakout single “Kill Bill,” which became her first No. 1 on the chart. “There’s nobody close,” says artist development specialist and academy member Chris Anokute when gauging SZA’s 2024 Grammy credentials. “The girl has paid her dues. She has been releasing music for seven years. And she has made a multigenre, multiformatted album — the best multigenre, multiformatted record I’ve heard in years. And it deserves to be the album of the year.”
Indeed, the feeling among insiders that Billboard spoke with for this article is that SZA’s career has hit all the right beats for a Grammy artist since she signed with Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) a decade ago — and that it’s time for the Recording Academy to properly recognize her. “The Grammys are supposed to reward artists who show development and growth; artists who were once opening up and then get to arena level,” one music industry veteran says. “The Grammys really should want to be behind the trajectory of an artist like that.”
A source on SZA’s team confirms that the label will run a traditional campaign for her and points to increased visibility from the second leg of her North America tour (which includes two late-October stops in Los Angeles), as well as a deluxe reissue of SOS — recently confirmed by SZA herself as being titled Lana, featuring “seven to 10 [new] songs” and coming sometime this fall. The team has also sent out SOS boxes to “partners at press, radio” and digital service providers that include the album on vinyl and CD, as well as a compass, ring, metal straw and cleaning brush.
“Such packages have become very effective through the years because that’s what helps make projects stand out,” says a veteran marketing strategist of the box set promotional strategy. “It’s about what’s going to remind people that this record is a contender.”
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While the album (and its accompanying singles, “Kill Bill” and the more recent top 10 hit “Snooze”) likely will be in the running, it’s working against the tide of recent history. R&B has had some success in the past decade within the all-genre Big Four categories, but the genre’s most successful artists in the general field have tended to be those who embraced more of a classic, retro-vibing R&B mold: Bruno Mars and Silk Sonic, H.E.R., Jon Batiste. Artists like SZA — whose R&B is largely rooted in hip-hop sonics (and who came up as the lone R&B artist on the rap-focused TDE) — have, like rap itself, struggled to gain that kind of Grammy recognition.
Anokute doesn’t necessarily see that lack of recent precedent as an issue for SZA’s chances, instead calling back two decades to a pair of artists whose blend of classic and modern soul sounds made them pop insiders and Grammy darlings. “To me, you could compare this SZA moment to Lauryn Hill’s and Alicia Keys’ big Grammy moments [in 1999 and 2002, respectively],” he says. “She has crossed boundaries, she has crossed race with this album. At the end of the day, popular is popular, right? … You can’t call pop music [only] music that is on top 40 radio. Pop music is the most popular genre. And at the end of the day, Black music is the most popular music in the world.”
No matter how popular her music is currently, SZA will still have her work cut out for her contending at next year’s Grammys, likely against some of the other biggest artists in the world right now — including Olivia Rodrigo, Morgan Wallen and of, course, three-time album of the year winner Taylor Swift. However, Anokute points out that no one, not even the galactically popular Swift, can boast the cross-demographic appeal that SZA now has: “In terms of the most popular record between all genres of people, SZA beats Taylor Swift. I don’t know anybody listening to Taylor Swift outside of mostly, you know, white people… But I know a lot of white people, a lot of Black people, a lot of Spanish people that are listening to SZA and are huge fans. I’m not saying that Taylor only appeals to white people or Caucasian people, but the majority of her fan base is not Black or brown. SZA’s is, but she also crossed over.”
And whether the Grammys ultimately reward SZA’s latest, one music industry veteran says that it is in the Recording Academy’s best interest to look forward with R&B as much as backward. “We appreciate [the recognition for] the Bruno Marses and the H.E.R.s — they’re a safe balance,” the veteran says. “I think the academy knows that to be a part of the future, they have to embrace the future… Can we prove the Rolling Stone guy [Jann Wenner] wrong? That’s what we should focus on.”
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
“I don’t go on TikTok,” says PinkPantheress when asked whom she pegs as future TikTok stars. It’s surprising, to say the least. Few musicians have utilized the platform as expertly as she has over the past three years. What started out as a bet with a friend to prove she could crack its algorithm — “I told her I could make a viral video if I wanted to. And then I did,” she remembers — wound up launching what has turned out to be a fruitful career IRL.
“Once I figured out the algorithm, I was like, ‘Well, surely this would be able to blow up the music, too,’ ” she says. The 22-year-old English musician (who goes by various pseudonyms in lieu of her real name) is sitting in a midsize meeting room at the 1 Hotel in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood, where the décor — black leather, bare metal and treated wood everywhere — is working hard to make nature feel modern, but she looks effortlessly cool in baggy denim and a comfortable tank top. She’s polite and cordial, even though it’s clear she would rather be doing anything but an interview. “I was like, ‘Well, I might as well just try and see what happens. And even if I don’t get anyone listening to it, at least it’s out there and not just stuck on my laptop.’ ”
The songs that were hiding out on her laptop quickly found an audience. Her brand of drum’n’bass-meets-’90s pop/R&B tapped right into the heart of the zeitgeist, resonating with a generation of kids who don’t know life before the internet, smartphones and social networks but are downright tickled by the idea of a more analog lifestyle.
“When I posted my first song, people were commenting saying it was really good. And I saw people using the sound — like 200 uses in a day or something,” PinkPantheress says. “At that point I was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’ Imagine you have a song that you didn’t think anyone was going to listen to, to suddenly way more people than you expected listening to it.”
Lia Clay Miller
Uploaded three years ago on Christmas Day, the song was the Michael Jackson-sampling “Just a Waste,” and it showcased what has become her trademark style: throwing a disco ball drenched in despair into a blender to create something deceptively fun. But while PinkPantheress loves sampling, she’s weary of relying on its easy pleasures. “I always like to think that I’m adding something to [the sample], which is, like, relevant enough that suddenly it’s a new song. I just think too many songs these days are just an interpolation,” she says.
With hordes of new fans clamoring for more, PinkPantheress uploaded “Pain” in January 2021, a song that would have fit in perfectly with the Euro alt-pop invasion of the late 1990s. At only a minute and 39 seconds long, it’s really more of a ditty than a song — but manages to perfectly convey forlorn teenage love.
“Just a Waste” and “Pain” showcased a young, gifted songwriter, one who could succinctly capture and clearly telegraph universal feelings to make listeners feel as if she might be reading their DMs. Early on, unrequited love dominated her music. The feeling of “having someone that you’ve always wanted to see romantically but you’ve never managed to be able to and stuff like that,” she says. Now that she’s getting more famous, though, her music may soon have a more optimistic glint. “I guess the more I create music, the less I want to be stuck in that world.”
Born in Bath, England, to a Black Kenyan mother and a white British father, PinkPantheress was raised in Kent with her older brother. She took to music at an early age, learning to play piano and forming a rock band with a few friends while in grammar school. She spent most of her free time watching music videos and interviews on YouTube. By the time she got to college, she started making electronic music and experimenting with musical software to create her own productions.
To try out her songs, she wrote and produced for her friend MaZz. “I think, objectively, the songs were good songs,” PinkPantheress says. “She was kind of the [voice] and face for my writing.” But, like many talented songwriters, PinkPantheress soon “wanted more control over how I sounded.” She registered for SoundCloud under the name of her favorite Steve Martin movie and began uploading songs.
Lia Clay Miller
Nothing caught on — but when she took to TikTok in December 2020, seemingly overnight, she became an indie pop darling. “Pain” broke onto the U.K. Singles chart in August 2021 and peaked at No. 35. Later that year, she signed a deal with Parlophone and Elektra Records and released her first mixtape, To Hell With It. As booking offers came in for PinkPantheress — who had yet to perform live — her management at Upclose took things slowly, opting for smaller shows that allowed her to build an audience rather than going for festival stages.
“I remember my first few shows after my mixtape was out at the end of 2021 and [my management] were making me do rooms of like 100 people and 150 people,” she recalls. “The biggest room I did was probably 800. I remember thinking, ‘Why are these rooms so small?’ ”
“It has been superintentional,” says Jesse Gassongo-Alexander, PinkPantheress’ co-manager, when asked about helping her build a fan base after finding so much success online. “It was always a case of putting in the hard work and taking the slower route to build a foundation that is solid that’s going to allow her to stay here for a while.”
Her story resembles that of another young female artist who managed to parlay massive online success into real-world results: rapper Ice Spice. On paper, PinkPantheress and Ice Spice may seem like photo negatives of each other — one’s a brash rapper from the Bronx who has no problem putting herself in the spotlight; the other’s an introverted singer who prefers the solitary pursuit of songwriting to industry glad-handing — but to PinkPantheress, they’re more alike than different. So much so that she offered Ice a spot on the remix to her hit song, “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2,” earlier this year.
“I feel like I don’t have that many peers that exist in a similar space to me,” she says. “I’m not talking about levels. I’m talking about internet space. I think a lot of people see me as being this, like, internet cutesy teen-pop girl. I feel like she was one of the newcomers whom I got drawn to because, even though she does drill and rap, it still feels like she’s in the same cutesy world to me. And she’s Black too, and that was a big important part of it to me. I prefer to collaborate with other Black artists.”
Lia Clay Miller
The song became an instant hit, her biggest so far, debuting at No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 after going viral on TikTok. For many in the United States, “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” was the first time they had heard PinkPantheress. It got her her first BET Award nominations (best collaboration, BET Her Award), landed her an MTV Video Music Awards nod (best new artist) and ultimately peaked at No. 3.
Many believe she’s a lock for her first Grammy nomination thanks to the song — if she had to guess, probably for best pop duo/group performance. She’s taken aback and amused when told about the drama that has surrounded the Grammy Awards’ classification of certain albums by Black artists — even more so when she learns how disappointed Justin Bieber was when his album Changes got the nod for best pop vocal album instead of best R&B album.
But even without a Grammy nomination, she can count this year as an unequivocal success. In addition to her biggest single yet, she appeared on Barbie: The Album — as good an “I’ve arrived” moment as any. But still, even as her career explodes, it’s surprising to hear that TikTok has taken a back seat.
“I didn’t leave it behind. I still post on it,” she says reassuringly. “I love using it to post my own videos, but I do not watch videos on there. Because like a year ago, I would scroll and I’d see too many TikToks about me. I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ ”
Makes sense. Her management team trusts her to make the best decisions for herself. “I think she has shown how globally intelligent she is by being one of the earlier trendsetters,” Gassongo-Alexander says. “Coming from TikTok and appealing to a wider audience and then knowing how to retain that wider audience.”
How does PinkPantheress plan to keep growing that audience? By keeping on keeping on, it seems. She’s uninterested in sacrificing her core audience at the altar of pop stardom. Thankfully, her music is naturally easy on pop fan ears. “What I’ve realized is that my natural way of writing is more pop-friendly than anything,” she says. “So even though the beats can be kind of alternative, I still write in a very standard structure. And I make sure all the lyrics are tangible. And because of that, I think that it has made the [music] that I’m doing very accessible to mainstream audiences. But my biggest fear is having people hear me do a [song] and recognize that I’m doing it for the wrong reasons.”
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.