Los Angeles, CA – The Recording Academy honored a range artists who died this previous 12 months throughout its in memoriam section on the 2019 Grammy Awards. One individual noticeably absent from the tribute was XXXTENTACION, and it apparently wasn’t an oversight.
In keeping with a report by Variety, the Grammys rejected repeated requests from the late artist’s reps for his inclusion and purposefully left him out the section. The controversial rapper reportedly wasn’t featured resulting from his alleged acts home violence.
X was clearly on the Recording Academy’s radar although. In December, Rolling Stone particularly requested Academy president Neil Portnow about X’s possibilities being within the section.
“It’s at all times a frightening job to contemplate the gifted younger artists who died this 12 months,” Portnow stated. “We design the present after realizing the nominations, and that was right now, so we might be deciding on the programming that now. We don’t have pre-obits ready like in journalism however we do go away time yearly for an in memoriam and we might be planning that now. I don’t have a solution for you on XXX.”
Portnow stated the Academy tracks all the deaths within the music trade annually however can solely characteristic about “10 to 15 p.c” the deceased within the present’s in memoriam section. Nevertheless, X was acknowledged in a listing featured on the Grammy website.