Kanye West has a record 21 GRAMMY awards out of over 60 nominations. Most have been in the hip hop categories, but now Kanye is looking to expand into some rock category Grammys.
TMZ reports that West's label, Def Jam, has submitted Kanye's track "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)" for "Best Rock Performance." TMZ notes that the submission has made it past the screening process and was on the first ballot sent out to voters.
That means if Kanye's song gets enough votes, it'll be on the final ballot for Best Rock Grammy. A similar occurance happened at the 2017 Grammys, when a Beyonce song was nominated but ultimately did not take home the trophy.
In 2017, we spoke to to The Recording Academy's Senior Vice President, Awards, Bill Freimuth, who tried to explain how the Beyonce song made it through:
"When you exclude metal, the rock category is one of our biggest umbrellas." Freimuth notes. "Not quite as broad as pop, but maybe the next up in terms of what constitutes rock – it can be blues rock, folk rock, ballads. All of that. I think what we found this year is that so many artists that were in rock or adjacent to rock were really taking more sonic risks this year than ever before, and it made for a really exciting dynamic landscape in that field."
As for how voting works, Bill explained the process:
"Every one of our thirteen thousand members can vote in the general fields and then for the genre fields, like the rock field, you get to choose up to 15 categories of the remaining 80 to vote in. So people have to be really selective, and we say that one should only be voting in a category where they have expertise. So, presumably, the people who are voting in metal have expertise in metal."
Kanye has dabbled in rock before, spotted wearing metal shirts from Cradle of Filth, Testament, Megadeth and aping the metal style for his Yeezus logo. A few years ago, he sported the gaudiest metal ensemble I've ever seen.
Does this even sound like a rock song?
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Nc9n77W42g][/youtube]
Kanye
