Meek Mill Shares Hilarious Tale of Double-Date Dinner with Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Nicki Minaj Amid Drake Beef
In the wake of his acclaimed album “Championships,” Meek Mill took center stage in a CRWN interview exclusively on TIDAL with Elliott Wilson and a live audience.
Amidst the discussions, the topic of his past feud with Drake arose, leading to a surprising revelation that left everyone in stitches.
Meek Mill Shares Hilarious Tale of Double-Date Dinner with Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Nicki Minaj Amid Drake Beef
In the wake of his acclaimed album “Championships,” Meek Mill took center stage in a CRWN interview exclusively on TIDAL with Elliott Wilson and a live audience.
Amidst the discussions, the topic of his past feud with Drake arose, leading to a surprising revelation that left everyone in stitches.
Jay-Z’s Grammys speech about Beyoncé reiterates an ongoing issue with the awards
Jay-Z called out the Recording Academy’s snubs against his wife, Beyoncé, during the Grammys on Sunday in a speech that drew attention to the lack of recognition Black artists have endured at the esteemed award show.
Greg Carr, associate professor in the Department of Afro-American studies at Howard University, says the music industry was built on exclusion.
“Once exclusion was no longer an option, the inclusion of Black music has been curated, at least historically, very carefully, to absorb that music while minimizing black people,” he says.
During Jay-Z’s acceptance speech for the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award on Sunday, he underscored this lack of acknowledgment.
“We love y’all. We want y’all to get it right,” he said. “I don’t want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than anyone and never won album of the year. So even by your own metrics, that doesn’t work.”
Beyoncé is the most decorated artist in Grammy history, securing that title in 2023 after four big wins including the award for best dance/electronic album for “Renaissance.” However, many fans felt she was slighted in the album of the year category for the highly acclaimed project. No Black woman has earned that award in 25 years.
“I don’t read Jay-Z as speaking up just for Beyoncé,” says Adriane Lentz-Smith, an associate professor of history, and African and African American studies at Duke University. “But again calling the Grammys out for a pattern or a repeated practice of underplaying what Black artists have done… in the same way that rarely is advocating for any one person about solely them and getting them what they should have.”
Beyoncé has been nominated for album of the year four times, for “Renaissance,” “Lemonade,” “Beyoncé” and “I Am… Sasha Fierce.”
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“Beatles aren’t Black; Elvis wasn’t Black; Bob Dylan wasn’t Black. But the influence of Black people allowed for the incorporation of Black musical style without Black people,” Carr says.
“So when I say that the system was set up to center whiteness, that’s just natural because that’s what the recording industry was set up to do. It couldn’t stay that way because regardless of what structures do, people are going to do something else. So in the ’70s, you see the increasing popularity of Black music worldwide.”
A history of racial bias
Since its inception in 1957, the Grammy Awards have been accused of racial bias.
“It’s a part of a longer history of taking for granted the innovations and contributions that African-Americans have made to popular music and to its various genres,” Lentz-Smith says. “It’s not the first time the Grammys have been called out. It’s not the first time they’ve been called upon to self-correct, and they haven’t quite gotten there yet.”
In recent years, the show has been tagged #GrammysSoWhite and Black artists protested by not attending. Many celebrities have called out the award show for its mistreatment of Black artists.
In 2016, rapper/singer Frank Ocean decided not to submit his music for the awards as a direct response to this problem.
When it comes to album of the year, not only has the most decorated artist not won the category, as Jay-Z highlighted, only 11 Black artists have won the category to date.
