How Grammy Robbed Wizkid Of His Rightfully Deserved Awards.

Yesternight, we witnessed one of the biggest music heists at the 2022 Grammy Award, As the Recording Academy robbed Wizkid of his rightfully deserved albums. A song with just 1.8 Million streams on Spotify and literally, zero certifications in the entire World won the best global music performance over Essence, a song with over 100 million streams on Spotify; 2X platinum certification in the United States and undisputable cultural influence.

I’m sure you are wondering what criteria were used to select the winners. If they are selecting the winners based on creativity as some sources claimed, how exactly are they measuring the criteria?

You might be thinking that the Grammy is just an award that doesn’t really say much about the creative performance of an artist, but I will like to inform you that the Grammy award is a major determinant and dispeller of our music history.

For example, if you ask me the best rap album in 2015, I will tell you it is Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, no doubt it is. But what if I tell that I barely know other rap albums released in 2015, and I only got to know about the album in 2020 after I saw that it won the Best rap album category in 2015.

Since the Recording Academy possesses such power and influence Why then should we allow them to distort & manipulate our music history due to politics, racism, favouritism and other forms of bullshit battling the organization?

A comparison of Mohabbat and Essence Spotify Streams

Essence losing the Global performance category to Mohabbat a song I barely know, even as a global music enthusiast and journalist is an act that celebrates mediocrity over hard work and greatness Yet we wonder why we have stopped moving forward as the human race.

Essence was unanimously declared the song of the summer all over the world in 2021, The best song of 2021 according to Rolling Stone, that is aside from the Platinum certifications it earned in the United States and Canada, Gold Certification in the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

Aside from its cultural influence and certifications Essence holds multiple records on the charts, aside from charting on the US Billboard Hot 100 ( The first Nigerian Song to do so) peaking at No 9, It also spent multiple weeks in the Number one spot on the Billboard World Digital Song Sales chart, Peaked no  28 on the Billboard Global 200 Chart, 30 on the Canadian Hot 100 and 16 on the UK singles chart. What else says global Music performance than these records.

Without any form of bias or disrespect, I don’t see any edge “Mother Nature”, the so-called best global music album by the Legendary Kidjo has over Wizkid’s Made In Lagos.  “Made In Lagos” is the longest-charting African album ever in Billboard’s History, the best selling and most-streamed African album with over one billion streams under a year of release.

Putting aside the commercial success of the album, “Made In Lagos” is a great artistic piece that cut across several music genres. According to the recording Academy themselves, the album was a gravitational centre for cross-genre luminaries — from reggae, R&B, and grime.

With nothing else to prove, I am going to conclude this piece by giving a sound warning to Recording Academy to get their Sh*t together and not use politics and favouritism to dilute or distort our Music history and should apparently give honour to whom it is due.