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Drake and The Weeknd are continuing their boycott of the Grammy Awards with neither artist submitting their solo music for consideration for the 2023 awards, Pitchfork reports. The news arrived on the same day it was confirmed that Silk Sonic have also opted to "bow out" next year's awards.
While Drake and The Weeknd have declined to submit their 2022 albums, Honestly, Nevermind and Dawn FM respectively, for consideration they do appear on voting options for their guest features on other artist's work. Voting began on Thursday, October 13.
The Weeknd has boycotted the Grammys since 2021 when his album After Hours and its hit singles garnered zero nominations. “Because of the secret committees, I will no longer allow my label to submit my music to the Grammys,” he said at the time. Drake, meanwhile, has won 4 Grammys in his career but soured on the Academy in 2017 when his song "Hotline Bling" was put in the rap categories and shut out of the pop awards, where he felt it belonged.
Another artist having issues with the ways the Academy places songs is Nicki Minaj. On Thursday The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that her Number 1 song "Super Freaky Girl" will compete in the Best Pop Solo Performance at next year’s Grammys, not the rap categories. During an Instagram Live she shared her upset by this move and pointed out that Latto's "Big Energy," a stylistically similar pop-rap crossover, will compete in the pop categories which is... confusing.
Minaj told her followers: "Let’s say that ‘Super Freaky Girl’ is a pop song. Let’s just say that. What is [Latto’s] ‘Big Energy’? … If you move ‘Super Freaky Girl’ out of rap and put it in pop, do the same thing for ‘Big Energy.’ Same producers on both songs, by the way. So let’s keep shit fair. Even when I’m rapping on a pop track, I still out-rap.”
The FADER has contacted the Record Academy for comment.