LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - A little over a year ago, rap legend MC Lyte penned an op-ed on the importance of artists’ involvement in the The Recording Academy and the GRAMMY voting process. She detailed the first time she was nominated for a GRAMMY and reflected on Hip Hop’s 1988 boycott of the prestigious event.
“I was 23 [years old] and had been in the business for six years," MC Lyte wrote. "To receive such an acknowledgement was amazing. It had only been three years since the GRAMMYs started televising Rap categories—something my peers had fought for. In 1988, that fight included a boycott, which was what everybody saw.
“What everybody didn’t see was everything behind the scenes. To get rap recognized, to make the GRAMMYs create a Rap category, to get those awards televised—that took us getting involved in how The Recording Academy treated our music.”
The past two years saw Hip Hop rile against the nominations and winners in many of the GRAMMY rap categories. That has not been the case in 2016. The Recording Academy spent much of 2015 focused on outreach and education across the board, but specifically in Hip Hop. Many that are apart of our community feel much like Lyte felt in 1988, that the Academy was a proverbial Emerald City with a “magical Oz” pulling strings behind the curtain. But in order to see the change needed, it’s usually best to learn about the process and get involved. “Who would make the Academy recognize my type of music as art?” Lyte asked rhetorically. “Who would decide what makes a good rap record? I wanted to be part of that decision, so I got involved to help shape the future of the music I loved.”
To learn more about the process behind the 58th Annual GRAMMY Award nominees, HipHopDX spoke with Bill Freimuth, The Recording Academy’s SVP of Awards. During the conversation we learned the specifics behind this year’s nomination process, whether the Academy saw an increase in submissions and membership, its reaction to the backlash received in recent years, and how artists can become a member of The Recording Academy.
The 58th GRAMMY Awards Nomination Process
HipHopDX: This is a successful nomination cycle for the GRAMMYs’ rap categories. We’d love insight into the process behind selecting nominees. This is probably the first time in the past few years that the Hip Hop community hasn’t been critical of the nominations.
Bill Freimuth: We’re very happy about that, obviously. I think the first thing to note is that it was kind of an extraordinary year in Hip Hop in general. The number of really great releases that came out this year made it very hard to whittle down. It wasn’t a matter of what could we find that was worthy of a nomination. I think our voters did a really great job with that. As far as the actual awards process, it was the same as it has been in the past for all the rap categories. We [accepted submissions] from all of the labels that are registered with us and from all of our members. Those end up getting screened by a screening committee for eligibility and to make sure they fall into the right categories. They go on the ballot which goes out to our entire voting membership. Each voter can vote in up to 20 of our 83 categories, not including the four categories in the general field that everyone can vote in. The first ballot narrowed it down to the five nominees. The second ballot went out. They voted again and we’ll find out on Monday who the GRAMMY recipients are in those categories. Rap is one of our more straightforward fields.
Outside of just the basic logistics of the process itself, we’ve been working for several years on outreach to [the Hip Hop] community among others. We really try to get the message out there that if you are qualified to be a member of The Recording Academy, we want you to be a member of the Academy and we want you to vote. The Hip Hop community is a lot more personal in terms of the connections and the way that information gets across and we’ve really been cultivating a lot of those personal connections. “Join the vote” is really the heart of our message. For those people in the past who have been saying, “Y’all got it wrong,” as far as the nominations go, the first thing we ask is “Are you a member? If you are, did you vote?” If the answer is “No,” then they’ve got nothing to complain about because that’s what determines the nominations: The voters. We work very hard to have all of the people who should be in the Academy and should be voting doing that.
DX: Did you see an uptick in membership this year? MC Lyte penned an op-ed piece last year describing the process and the importance of the Hip Hop community and the rap community to get involved in the process. Did that help solicit new members in the rap categories?
Bill Freimuth: Membership on the whole was up a bit this year. We don’t have specific numbers on who is voting and in what category. I can tell you that the submissions were up pretty significantly this year. We had a 29% increase in submissions to the rap field this year. We took that as a pretty good sign, but that clearly is because people are paying more attention and wanted to be involved.
The Recording Academy's Reaction To Backlash
DX: The previous two years there had been backlash from the Hip Hop community as we discussed. Was that of concern to the GRAMMYs? Do you normally take public opinion in consideration?
Bill Freimuth: Do I personally react to it? Yes, because I’m always very proud of the process with moves forward every year with a tremendous amount of integrity and hard work and people to get it done. Then the nominations are announced and every year there’s always going to be some community typically that’s upset with the nominations for whatever reason. I would say on the whole we heard a lot less of that this year. Not only from the Hip Hop community but kind of across the board. We certainly don’t publicly react to public opinion. We stand by the work of our voters. Sometimes something will happen that will cause us to make an adjustment to one of our rules, which we do. On the whole, no. We let the public say what they’re going to say and do what they’re going to do in response to the nominations. We really stand by the integrity of the process. Again, the process is only as good as the people who are participating in the process. That’s where I think we’ve really made some headway in the last year or so in terms of getting more folks to be participating in the process.
DX: Jeriel Johnson has been doing a lot of advocacy on behalf of the Academy for the past year in rap and R&B categories. He’s been out pressing the flesh speaking with publications and artists and championing the importance of becoming a member of the Academy and participating in the process. How would you describe the effectiveness of his role so far?
Bill Freimuth: I think you described his job pretty well. Those were very much the marching orders he’s been given. He’s been doing a good job. I think it’s really important to note that any of these kind of company wide initiatives, even if they’re focusing on one particular genre, involves a lot of people. It involves our member services area, the awards area, our communications department, our elected leaders. We have this pretty large governance structure of people who are all music makers in their own right. They’re part of getting our word out there and being our ambassadors every day. In the awards department, we try to energize the folks who participate in our committees. For rap we have that screening committee that I talked about. For R&B we have both the screening committee and the nominations review committee. We always try to take a little time in all of those meetings to do some education, some coaching. You’ll have a top producer in Philadelphia who’s working with some hot young artist and we’ll say, “Hey, you should join the academy and vote.” Or a songwriter in New York, or an engineer in LA—all of these folks were engaging to help spread the word. These are people who already believe in what we’re doing. They get on these committees. Some of them join a little skeptically. Typically they’ll leave the room with their eyes open and feeling a new respect and love for what we’re trying to do at the Academy. It’s a lot of people working really hard to get it right, to make sure all the people we want involved, are involved and participating.
The GRAMMYs Viral Video Campaign
DX: There have been a few viral videos released this year leading up to the 58th Annual GRAMMY Awards. There was one called “In The Cut” which was a barbershop discussion on the Best Rap Album category. Our audience reacted really well to that video. There was another Kendrick Lamar video that felt more advertorial but was still an authentic look in the successful year he’s had. Is this a new endeavor for the Academy? This is the first time I remember the video campaign resonating.
Bill Freimuth: I’m not sure that the whole concept is new, but we’ve certainly stepped it up this year. Not only from the quantity of videos but in the quality of them. I think that when you can involve someone like Kendrick Lamar who speaks so strongly to a particular community, it immediately buys us a lot of attention. Secondly, it buys us a kind of authenticity that I think it deserves. Did you also see the one filmed in Compton with “Alright?”
DX: I did. I loved that one.
Bill Freimuth: I was so moved the first time I saw that. I was tearing up, I swear to God. It was like, “Wow!” What’s also so great about it is that it’s from somewhat of an under-the-radar place. Yeah, it goes viral, which is great. But it’s not being broadcast on CBS. It’s not in the real mainstream world. I think that that also buys a lot of interest from the fans and music makers. We’ve got such a fantastic team of folks that have been working on putting these things together. I can say that because I’m not one of them. [Laughs] The team is thinking about these things year round and when the time comes they know the feel that they need to have to reach the right people. I’m so proud to be affiliated with those folks.
DX: I know you’re approaching the GRAMMYs and won’t get any rest between now and Tuesday. Have you guys thought about next steps or ways to continue to build awareness around the Academy and the importance of becoming a member? What happens after 2016?
Bill Freimuth: We’ll have to regroup, we’ll have to rest immediately after the show. [Laughs] We’ll take a couple days to regroup. I think that we’re really reflect on everything we did in the last year, maybe go back further than that. Then we’re gonna say “OK, this worked. Let’s do some more of that. Let’s do it even better.” Or, “This was OK. It didn’t really buy us too much. Maybe we’ll refocus those resources elsewhere.” We’re going to continue the dialog with as many of the most engaged music makers as we can round up to keep getting the story out and to keep saying, “This is your Academy, folks. A lot of us here are employed full-time and we’re very grateful for that. But we don’t vote and we don’t determine who the winners are. That is up to you as the music making community. If you’re apart of that, be a part of that.”
How To Vote For The GRAMMYs
Where and how can people register?
To apply for membership you can either download the application or call The Academy’s member hotline: 866.794.339
Who's eligible?
To be a voting member, you have to be a music artist with a minimum of 6 commercially released tracks (12 if it’s online). But there are 3 levels of membership: Voting, Associate, andStudent and each has its own level of criteria.
What happens after you vote?
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the ballots actually go to a third party accounting firm, Deloitte & Touche, not The Recording Academy. The Academy does this to help ensure the integrity of the process. It’s simple addition from there: no one’s vote is weighted, every vote counts as one, and nothing gets overridden. Once the firm has tabulated the votes, they send the Academy the final list of winners and that’s it.
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