New YorkDec 7, (tca/dpa/GNA) – Canadian rapper Drake has withdrawn from this year’s Grammy award nominations.
According to Variety, Drake asked the Recording Academy to take him out of consideration for two awards for an undisclosed reason, two weeks after the nominations were announced.
Drake had been previously nominated for Best Rap Album for Certified Lover Boy and Best Rap Performance for Way 2 Sexy (featuring Future and Young Thug).
Drake previously criticized the Grammy awards after The Weeknd, a fellow Canadian star, was not nominated following the success of his album After Hours in 2020. At the time, Drake said it would be a good idea to start an offshoot awards ceremony.
“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 an Instagram Story.
“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. This is a great time for somebody to start something new that we can build up overtime and pass on to the generations to come.”
The 2022 Grammy awards will be held January 31 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
GNA