The Recording Academy will stop using the term “urban” in its awards categories in an effort to launch “a new chapter” in its history.
The Best Urban Contemporary Album category will be changed to Best Progressive R&B Album ahead of next year’s ceremony. According to the press release, the transition is meant to “describe the merit or characteristics of music compositions or performance themselves”.
The records qualifying for this category should have “more progressive elements of R&B”, which include “samples and elements of hip-hop, rap, dance, and electronic music,” as well as “production elements found in pop, euro-pop, country, rock, folk, and alternative”.
The Recording Academy said it has made the changes to ensure its awards were “inclusive and (reflected) the current state of the music industry”. Other changes at the Grammys include renaming Best Rap/Sung Performance as Best Melodic Rap Performance “to represent the inclusivity of the growing hybrid performance trends within the rap genre” by artists such as Drake and Post Malone.
The Latin Rock, Urban, Or Alternative Album category also sees the term “urban” removed. Latin Pop, alternatively, has been renamed to Latin Pop and Urban.
Organisers said this change was made in order to “migrate the genres of Latin urban and represent the current state and prominent representation in the Latin urban genres”.
Previously, Tyler, the Creator was among the artists to call out the urban category as racist. “I’m half and half on it. On one side, I’m very grateful that what I made could just be acknowledged in a world like this. But also, it sucks that whenever we – and I mean guys that look like me – do anything that's genre-bending... they always put it in a ‘rap’ or ‘urban’ category.”
“I don’t like that ‘urban’ word,” he added. “It’s just a politically correct way to say the n-word to me. So when I hear that, I’m just like, ‘Why can’t we be in pop?’ Half of me feels like the ‘rap’ nomination was just a backhanded compliment.”
