Q-Tip Blasts the Grammys For Snubbing A Tribe Called Quest

Grammy nominees were announced yesterday, and it turns out hip-hop was the genre to beat this year, which is surprisingly progressive considering the pop-heavy crop of winners from past award periods. Naturally, there are arenas of contention among those who did not make the list. Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” and ÷ (Divide), and Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” were the notable pop snubs—Sheeran was relegated to a single nomination in a pop-specific category, and Swift was recognized twice, but only as a songwriter.

For all the strides the Grammys made to diversify their catalog of nominees, they notably failed to include visionary rap group A Tribe Called Quest. They released their farewell album We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service this month last year, to much acclaim, but failed to get recognized for any honors. Group leader Q-Tip took to social media to voice his anger about the omission, which adds insult to injury considering Tribe lost their influential co-founder Phife Dawg before the album was completed, especially considering the awards show recruited the group for a powerful closing performance last year.

In Q-Tip’s expletive-filled videos, seemingly recorded in his kitchen with jazz music playing in the background, he blasted the Grammys for being unjust, saying, “Y’all think it’s some sort of caveat because this is the first time that no white man was nominated in no major categories and shit? We were the most black cultured group out. That’s all we stood on. That’s what we represented. This fuckin’ album we just dropped, this last Tribe album, it stands with everyone else’s shit that’s up there.” He acknowledged that he doesn’t mean to disrespect anyone of his genre-mates that were nominated, and further listed a handful of iconic artists that the Grammys have also neglected to recognize.

Watch Q-Tip’s diatribe below, and listen to a Tribe performance from the Paste Cloud.