Cries, Controversies, Conspiracies for Nigerians at Grammys 2024: Lessons for Stakeholders
It was a familiar story of heartbreak for Nigerians at the 2024 Grammy awards ceremony as none of their faves got a gong but there is a lesson for the entire music industry despite the hard-luck.
The Grammys awards for the year 2024 have come and gone, but the dust that was raised during the award night still lingers in the air.
The Nigerian music industry did itself proud with 10 nominations, even though a few people would have rued their luck. This meant that the chance of a Nigerian artiste winning at least one Grammy gong was pretty high, no matter the historic unpredictability of the decisions of the Recording Academy.
The inaugural Best African Music Performance category, particularly, had five song nominations – Amapiano by Asake and Olamide; City Boys by Burna Boy; Unavailable by Davido and Musa Keys; Rush by Ayra Starr; and Water by Tyla.
Four of these songs belong to Nigerian singers, and expectedly, the hopes of their Nigerian fanbases were heightened. The probability of Tyla, the only ‘outsider’, winning it was 1/5. The chances for a Nigerian winning was 4/5. The odds were definitely in the favour of ‘Afrobeats’ over ‘Amapiano’, but it wasn’t going to be.
South African singer, Tyla, took the gong home with ‘Water’, and that was the final nail in the coffin for Nigerians who could not resist shaking the pillars of social media to express their displeasure. That wouldn’t be the first time that Nigerians would go to the extreme in protesting the decision of the Grammys though. And considering the momentum that Afrobeats has been gathering, it is only normal that it gets more attention in the global music space.
Therefore, Afrobeats fans were not wrong to expect too much as the aftermath of the Grammy overlook was cries of foul play, conspiracies and controversies.
Controversies
No award body in the world can avoid controversies. Awards and controversies are 5&6 – inseparable. Not Grammys, not Headies, not MOBO, not BET can wash themselves completely clean because awards are judgmental, and not everybody will agree on the same choices.
The speech of billionaire rapper Jay Z on the night was quite an interesting one. The rapper, real name Shawn Carter, accused the Grammys of never getting it right, as his wife, Beyonce, the most decorated in Grammy history with 32 gongs, has never won the Album of the Year - Grammy’s most revered award. Adele has won it, Taylor Swift has but not the famous Queen Bey.
“I’m just saying we want y’all to get it right... At least get it close to right. And obviously, it’s subjective… because it’s music and it’s opinion-based.
“I don’t want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than everyone and never won album of the year,” he further stated in obvious reference Beyoncé.
“So even by your own metrics, that doesn’t work. Think about that. The most Grammys, never won album of the year. That doesn’t work,” the legendary rapper expressed.
In fact, the New York Times wrote that Beyoncé is “indeed a barometer of the awards’ complex treatment of Black musicians on the whole.”
Famous musician John Legend told a tabloid in 2020 that:
“It’s almost impossible for a Black artist to win Album of the Year… It’s like, how many years do we have to see Beyoncé getting snubbed? It’s kind of insane, actually.”
The likes of Drake and Kanye have equally snubbed Grammy awards over the years. In other words, even Americans see the Grammys as controversial, “insane” and “not getting it right.” So, dear Nigerians, kindly temper your temper.
Conspiracies
For Americans, it is controversy, for Africans, it is conspiracy. And perhaps the loudest conspiracy theory was the Grammys using Afrobeats and its stars for clout.
It is hard to argue against the engagement that Nigerians give foreign outlets on social media. From European football clubs to celebrities, people outside Nigeria know that there is a huge digital resource in the world’s most populous Black nation.
A quick scan of the Guinness World Record Twitter page will show a significant gap between the engagements of tweets that involve Nigerians and those that don’t. Hilda Baci, particularly, was a goldmine for them. Football players who vibe to Nigerian songs in their videos are bound to get triple their usual engagements.
So, without a doubt, there is truth in the significant clout that Nigeria and Afrobeats give, but did Grammy deliberately do that because of clout? I’ll leave you to answer that.
Another conspiracy theory is the Recording Academy is protecting American stars from being rivalled by Nigerian artists. This sounds skewed because the Grammys is fundamentally an American award. It is because of global relevance and appeal that it keeps spreading its tentacles to other cultures not within the US. But its core remains American.
Lessons for stakeholders
This is then a lesson to Afrobeats fans and stakeholders that Western accolades are good but should not become validation.
We need a structure for our music industry and reverence for our awards. African artistes will prefer being sent back at the entrance of a White award ceremony to being given a VIP seat at an African event.
Till now, Nigeria doesn’t have an arena for a proper show with all the equipment and sophistication. Insecurity issues mean that there can’t be national tours and campus tours for artistes, which was the practice in the 2000s. Our local streaming numbers remain unimpressive.
On the part of the artistes, disregard for fans, poor planning and serial lateness are issues. All of the aforementioned combine to make Nigeria a discouraging environment for music success.
From creators to consumers and regulators, every stakeholder has a part to play to make things better.