Solange photo by Philip Cosores
The Grammys once again proved themselves to be culturally irrelevant last night when Adele’s “Hello” and 25 beat Beyoncé’s “Formation” and Lemonade for each of the top three awards. Though 25 is a fabulous album, even Adele knew the Recording Academy got it dead wrong. And she wasn’t alone.
After the ceremony, Solange took to Twitter to respond to the Grammy’s snubbing of her sister, Beyoncé. In a simple and shade-heavy message, Solange referenced Frank Ocean’s recent Tumblr post in which he called out the award show’s tone-deafness.
Without saying much, Solange actually makes a pretty spot-on point; switch a few words of Ocean’s post around and the message remains the same. Instead of talking about Taylor Swift’s 1989 beating Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, the post might as well have read, “… You know what’s really not ‘great TV’ guys? 25 getting Album of the Year over Lemonade. Hands down one of the most ‘faulty’ TV moments I’ve seen … Use the old gramophone to actually listen bro, Beyoncé’s one of the best alive.”
There seems to be a trend of white artists’ numerically named albums beating out black artists’ culturally rich and prevalent ones at the Grammys. As long as that keeps happening, expect the Recording Academy to keep chipping away at its own credibility and rebuffed musicians to keep pointing it out. Wuddup, Frank.
