As the Grammy Awards 2021 nominations were announced on Tuesday, not everyone in the music industry was met with good news.
The Weeknd aka Abel Tesfaye turned to his social media and gave an earful to the Recoding Academy for not nominating him for any categories this year.
The 30-year-old After Hours hit maker tweeted: “The Grammys remain corrupt. You owe me, my fans and the industry transparency…”
Soon enough, his army of fans stood by him in the fight against the academy.
His album After Hours had two No. 1 hits but the singer was still snubbed as the list of nominations rolled out.
The Weeknd’s omission, however, was addressed by the Recording Academy’s interim chief Harvey Mason Jr. who said in a livestream after the announcement: “Y’know, it really just comes down to the voting body that decides. We have eight nomination slots to fill in, five in others, and the voters vote for their favorites. It’s really interesting, though.”
He was further asked whether the snub happened because members couldn’t decide what genre his songs fell into.
Responding to that he said the members will revise the process in the future but it wouldn’t have anything to do with The Weeknd’s exclusion.
“We look at it every year and make tweaks and revisions to the process; we did it this year, last year, we’ll do it next year. And I don’t think this calls it into question, honestly. The process is there so we can continue to monitor excellence,” he added.