How Bad Bunny Saved the Grammys

The Grammys person agelong been a dependable motor of outrage. Every year, it seemed, 1 humiliation oregon different would prehend the ceremony, specified arsenic erstwhile Macklemore defeated Drake, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, and Jay-Z for Best Rap Album, successful 2014, oregon when, the twelvemonth before, the set Fun. bushed retired Frank Ocean for Best New Artist. All the mode backmost successful 2002, the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack someway won Album of the Year alternatively of OutKast’s “Stankonia”—a determination that aged poorly adjacent earlier presenter Janet Jackson had finished speechmaking it disconnected the card. Throughout the Grammys’ astir seventy-year history, the Recording Academy has disproportionately favored the precise white, the precise male, and the precise old, consistently rewarding bequest acts and manufacture darlings alternatively than the year’s astir accomplished, indispensable music. In 2018, Neil Portnow, who was past the president of the Academy, suggested that women performers needed to “step up” if they wanted to triumph much awards. The remark confirmed what everyone already knew: the Grammys voting assemblage was an out-of-touch boys nine whose biases reflected an instauration connected the brink of irrelevance. (What else could explicate Beck beating Beyoncé, successful 2015, for champion album?) When Portnow near his post, successful 2019, his replacement, Deborah Dugan, accused the Academy of vote-fixing and mismanaging finances, which the Academy denied; she was enactment connected permission and past yet fto go. In the aftermath of these scandals, the Grammys person been connected thing of an apology tour, signalling to audiences and artists alike that they’ve heard the criticisms and they know. They know!

Heading into Sunday night’s event, successful Los Angeles, the Grammys were amazingly abbreviated connected salacious communicative lines. If 1 of the much compelling reasons to tune successful to the amusement is to spot conscionable however incorrect the Academy is going to get it, past this year’s ceremonial promised to beryllium a spot of a snoozer. The “big four” categories had fewer snubs; its nominees included preëminent stars specified arsenic Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and Sabrina Carpenter. There were besides 3 rap albums contending for Album of the Year—Clipse’s “Let God Sort Em Out,” Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX,” and Tyler, the Creator’s “Chromakopia”—the astir nods the genre has ever received successful the category. Adele, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift, meanwhile, would not beryllium astir to make buzz implicit rivalries and record-breaking, and nary large stars were sitting retired the ceremonial successful protest, arsenic Drake, Ocean, and the Weeknd person successful past years. Would this year’s telecast really beryllium an close reflection of the twelvemonth successful commercial, major-label music? After years of alleged corruption and catastrophic choices, was the Academy yet going to get it right?

Thankfully for the Grammys, Bad Bunny brought capable communicative intrigue with him to transportation the ceremony. Aside from being the archetypal Spanish-language creator to beryllium nominated astatine erstwhile for Album, Song, and Record of the Year, the Puerto Rican superstar is scheduled to execute astatine the Super Bowl halftime show, connected Sunday. It’s the archetypal clip that the main enactment volition beryllium performed wholly successful Spanish, thing the governmental close has deemed disgraceful. Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, said that agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement would “be each over” the Super Bowl, and D.H.S. advisor Corey Lewandowski scolded the N.F.L. for selecting “somebody who conscionable seems to hatred America truthful much.” (President Trump claimed not to cognize who Bad Bunny was, though helium said the imaginable of a Bad Bunny halftime amusement was “absolutely ridiculous.”) Bad Bunny has openly criticized the Trump Administration’s migration policies, calling retired the President himself and the malevolent militarization of ICE. Once again, the Grammys were astatine the bosom of a politically charged infinitesimal successful which its awards meant much than specified recognition—its choices would relation arsenic a taste bellwether, a remark connected wherever the manufacture stands connected 1 of the astir pressing human-rights issues of our time.

As the festivities began, it became wide that Bad Bunny would so service arsenic the night’s halfway of gravity. The show’s competent yet miraculously unfunny host, Trevor Noah, cozied up to Bad Bunny astatine his array and begged him to perform—a ploy, perhaps, to punctual the assemblage that the real show was soon to come, astatine the Super Bowl. Early successful the evening, erstwhile Bad Bunny’s medium “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” was awarded Best Música Urbana Album, his acceptance code opened with a rousing telephone to action: “ICE out,” helium declared. (Artists from Carole King to Bieber wore pins that said the same.) In a nighttime dense connected governmental statements but abbreviated connected overt governmental performativity, his connection was crisp and clear: “We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.” Earlier, Billie Eilish—who, preposterously, won Song of the Year for “Wildflower,” a way from last year’s Grammy-nominated medium “Hit Me Hard and Soft” that had been repackaged arsenic a single, allowing it to beryllium included successful this year’s awards—affirmed, during her acceptance speech, that “no 1 is amerciable connected stolen land.” But it was Bad Bunny’s protestations that reverberated the loudest. “The hatred gets much almighty with much hate,” helium said. “The lone happening that is much almighty than hatred is love. So, please, we request to beryllium different.”