Record-breaking rapper Drake sent shock waves throughout the music industry when he withdrew his 2022 Grammy nominations at the last minute.
Drake is one of the world’s most prolific songwriters and emcees, and he matched The Beatles’ record for having the top five singles on the Billboard charts simultaneously with his album Certified Lover Boy in August 2021. He also broke The Beatles’ longtime record with nine songs in the Billboard Top 10 at the same time.
Yet, the album garnered only two Grammy nods, one for Best Rap Album for Certified Lover Boy, and the other for Best Rap Performance for his song “Way 2 Sexy,” featuring Future and Young Thug.
Drake’s camp did not release an official rationale for snatching his songs out of those award categories. However, Drake, 35, has previously and loudly proclaimed his disgust with the Recording Academy that votes on the Grammys.
In December 2020, for example, Drake called for “something new that we can build up over time and pass on to the generations to come,” after it completely overlooked The Weeknd, a fellow Canadian, who had one of the top albums and singles of 2020.
“I think we should stop allowing ourselves to be shocked every year by the disconnect between impactful music and these awards and just accept that what once was the highest form of recognition may no longer matter to the artist that exist now and the ones that come after,” he wrote in his Instagram Story at that time. “It’s like a relative you keep expecting to fix up but they just won’t change their ways. The other day I said @theweeknd was a lock for either album or song of the year along with countless other reasonable assumptions and it just never goes that way.”
