Grammy nominations continuously find a way to rub people the wrong way. While they've been trying to take some initiative to have fair representation of everyone throughout the years but the fact of the matter is, the Grammy's use an album's commercial success to define who gets included in their nominations instead of the critical success. Over the years, rappers and artists have been vocal about this. While the nominations were revealed this morning, an veteran emcee has taken issue with it.
Q-Tip posted a series of videos on his Instagram page today addressing A Tribe Called Quest's last album, We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, not receiving a single nomination at this year's Grammy Awards. What he says is more deeply rooted in just the album itself. He says despite the fact that people noticed no white men were nominated in "any major category," the Grammys failed to acknowledge the fact that the latest Tribe album was based on black culture.
"We were the most black cultured group out. That’s all we stood on. That’s what we represented. This fucking album that we just put out — this last Tribe album — it stands with everybody else’s shit that’s up there. I don’t give a fuck," he said.
He goes onto to say that he respects anyone else that's nominated but is not down with the Grammy committee, especially after they got them to close out the ceremony last year.
"I'm sick of y'all fuckin Grammy n-ggas man. Y'all fuckin' get us to get out there and fuckin' perform last year and close the shit and y'all don't get us no fuckin' nomination?" he said.
He later mentions the Grammys continuous lack of acknowledgement towards legendary artists such as Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix.
"None of y'all rap n-ggas don't say shit. Fuck that! Don't say shit. Motherfucking right I'm hot. The last fucking Tribe album and y'all n-ggas don't give us no fucking nominations?" he said, "You know what come over to the Kennedy Center, you know what I'm saying, in December. We gon' honor the GOAT LL and shit and give him his fucking nomination and give him his award and shit. Y'all come see what the fuck we doing over there. FUCK y'all Grammy n-ggas. FUCK Y'ALL."
The Tribe album marks their final album before the passing of Phife Dawg and was released in November of 2016.
Check the clips below:
