Grammys remove 'urban' within some category names as record label bans term
"Best urban contemporary album" has been renamed "best progressive R&B album."
The Grammy Awards are making some major changes for its 2021 ceremony.
In a press release issued Wednesday, the Recording Academy announced it updated both the award categories and the guidelines and rules for the Award-nominating process for the 63rd annual awards show scheduled for next year.
Interim president and CEO of the Recording Academy, Harvey Mason Jr., said in a statement, "I’m excited to announce our latest changes, as we're constantly evaluating our Awards process and evolving it to ensure the GRAMMY Awards are inclusive and reflect the current state of the music industry."
The Grammys announced four awards receiving a revamp.
Best urban contemporary album is now renamed, best progressive R&B album and redefined to provide "a more accurate definition to describe the merit or characteristics of music compositions or performances themselves within the genre of R&B."
This move comes after Republic Records -- which represents artists ranging from Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande to Drake and The Weeknd -- announced it was banning the use of "urban" across the entire company, "from our verbiage in describing departments, employee titles and music genres." They urged the rest of the music industry to follow suit.
When asked by Variety about the timing of the Grammys dropping the word "urban," Mason explained it wasn't necessarily a reactionary move given the current discussion about race in the country and had actually been in the works for some time.
"It’s something we’ve been discussing for a couple of years, and the term has been a hot button for a while," Mason stated. "A lot of creators and people in that genre didn’t like that description and felt it pigeonholed certain styles of music, so when our constituents brought that to us in the form of a proposal, we listened and voted to approve, as asked by the people in that community."
As far as other major changes to the Grammys, best rap/sung performance category was renamed best melodic rap performance and redefined to "represent the inclusivity of the growing hybrid of performance trends within the rap genre."
Latin pop album has been renamed best Latin pop or urban album while Latin rock, urban or alternative album has been renamed best Latin rock or alternative album. The change was made to "migrate the genres of Latin urban and represent the current state and prominent representation in the Latin urban genres."
There were also changes made regarding what makes an artist eligible for the coveted best new artist award.
"There is no longer a specified maximum number of releases prohibiting artists from entering the Best New Artist category," the statement explained. "As such, the screening committees will be charged with determining whether the artist had attained a breakthrough or prominence prior to the eligibility year. Such a determination would result in disqualification."
Finally, the Recording Academy put in place new rules addressing potential conflicts of interest when establishing nomination review committees.
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