The Recording Academy Adopts Major Changes For 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

The Recording Academy of North America has announced today that it has made major changes to several rules and guidelines for the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards. These changes reflect the academy’s ongoing commitment to evolve with the musical landscape and to ensure that the Grammy Awards nominating process and rules are more transparent and fair.

Among the changes are updates to the Best New Artist category, Latin, R&B and Rap Fields, Nominations Review Committees, and more. The new changes go into effect immediately for the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards. In addition, the Grammy Awards Rules & Guidelines are now, for the first time, available.

“I’m excited to announce our latest changes, as we’re constantly evaluating our Awards process and evolving it to ensure the Grammy Awards are inclusive and reflect the current state of the music industry,” said Harvey Mason Jr., Chair & Interim President/CEO of the Recording Academy. “The Academy accepts proposals for rule changes from members of the music community throughout the year that are carefully reviewed and, if accepted, ultimately ratified at our annual Board meeting, a process that we are proud to have continued in this challenging year.”

“As a peer-driven and peer-voted award, members of the music community are directly involved in the growth and preservation of the Grammys process,” said Bill Freimuth, Chief Awards Officer at the Recording Academy. “Each year we receive a number of rule change proposals from artists, producers and songwriters asking us to re-evaluate our process to better reflect the current state of the music industry and how it’s evolved over the past 12 months.”

The approved rule amendments are as follows:

Best Urban Contemporary Album Category — Renamed and Redefined:

Best Urban Contemporary Album has been renamed Best Progressive R&B Album to appropriately categorize and describe this subgenre. This change includes a more accurate definition to describe the merit or characteristics of music compositions or performances themselves within the genre of R&B.

Best Progressive R&B Album: This category is intended to highlight albums that include the more progressive elements of R&B and may include samples and elements of hip-hop, rap, dance, and electronic music. It may also incorporate production elements found in pop, euro-pop, country, rock, folk, and alternative.

Best Rap/Sung Performance Category — Renamed and Redefined:

Best Rap/Sung Performance has been renamed Best Melodic Rap Performance to represent the inclusivity of the growing hybrid performance trends within the rap genre. The expanded category is defined as follows:

Best Melodic Rap Performance: This category is intended to recognize solo and collaborative performances containing elements of rap and melody over modern production. This performance requires a strong and clear presence of melody combined with rap cadence, and is inclusive of dialects, lyrics or performance elements from non-rap genres including R&B, rock, country, electronic or more. The production may include traditional elements of rap or elements characteristic of the aforementioned non-rap genres.

Latin Field: Placement of Latin Urban Recordings — Reclassify:

Latin Pop Album has been renamed Best Latin Pop Or Urban Album and Latin Rock, Urban Or Alternative Album has been renamed Best Latin Rock Or Alternative Album to migrate the genres of Latin urban and represent the current state and prominent representation in the Latin urban genres.

Best Latin Pop Or Urban Album: This category is intended to recognize excellence in Latin pop or urban music recordings that utilize a stylistic intention, song structure, lyrical content, and/or musical presentation to create a sensibility that reflects the broad spectrum of Latin pop music style and culture. The category includes recordings from balladeers and commercial Latin music and is not limited to any one region.

Best Latin Rock Or Alternative Album: This category is intended to highlight Latin rock or alternative music recordings that utilize a stylistic intention, song structure, lyrical content and/or musical presentation to create a sensibility that reflects the broad spectrum of the Latin music style and culture.

Best New Artist — Eligibility: There is no longer a specified maximum number of releases prohibiting artists from entering the Best New Artist category. As such, the screening committees will be charged with determining whether the artist had attained a breakthrough or prominence prior to the eligibility year. Such a determination would result in disqualification.

Visit the Recording Academy’s official website for further information on the 63rd Grammy Awards.

Format: UK English