For pretty much its entire existence, the Grammy Awards has represented what’s wrong with the music industry, especially in terms of how Black art and Black artists have been acknowledged.
The show has been littered with snubs, from Macklemore winning Best Rap Album in 2014 over Kendrick Lamar to the constant dismissal of Beyoncé’s work in the Album of the Year category. The Grammys has consistently been about utilizing Black talent for performances and ratings only to reward white artists with the most coveted trophies. I’ve long lost faith in the show as a true barometer for Black art’s successes or failures and mostly only give it a cursory glance or two when it airs in order to spare myself any disappointment. However, Sunday night’s Grammy Awards provided several moments of Black joy that provided a night of celebration, even if they didn’t undo the show’s historic and present shortcomings.
The 2025 Grammys seemed like a setup to another letdown. Beyoncé was up for Album of the Year again for Cowboy Carter, making it the fifth time she’d been nominated for the award. Each time before, she’d been rather shockingly cast aside. Beyoncé winning Album of the Year went from feeling like her crowning achievement to an indictment of the Grammy voting process. No year made that more clear than 2023, when, in the aftermath of another loss, quotes emerged from Grammy voters about Beyoncé that didn’t have much to do with her actual music and more about personal reasons they didn’t like her. But Beyoncé was just part of a larger picture: No Black woman had won Album of the Year this entire century, since Lauryn Hill won in 1999.
The album Beyoncé was nominated for, Cowboy Carter, is a country album that works to reclaim the genre’s Black roots, invited its own level of controversy. She was shut out of the Country Music Awards as the continuation of a full-fledged rebuke of her “intrusion” into the genre. So the Grammys awarding her with Best Country Album was a thunderous retort. Still, it felt like a long shot for Beyoncé, whose four previous losses for Album of the Year rank among the most controversial decisions in Grammys history. So her win felt like a crowning moment for the greatest entertainer of our generation.
I’ve had my own qualms about Beyoncé’s continued presence at the Grammys. I’ve long believed that her attendance gave credibility to a show that didn’t deserve it or her. But none of that mattered when I saw Beyoncé’s shocked, joyous and utter elation as her reaction went viral. Her happiness was infectious and her speech after winning Best Country Album defiantly pushing against the racial biases that create genre in the first place: “I think genre is a code word to keep us in our place as artists.”
While Beyoncé was the main event, it was the undercard that filled me with the most joy. First, Kendrick Lamar’s five-time win for “Not Like Us” is a momentous hip-hop achievement. Not only did he sweep the categories, but “Not Like Us” became just the second rap song to win Record and Song of the Year. The awards themselves were notable, but it was the joy around the actual announcements that stole the show. The crowd raucously singing “A minor” is hilarious and communal. The song itself, of course, is a timely attack on colonialism (and Drake, of course) that provided a rallying cry for the summer. It felt good for a song that we loved so much to get recognized, even if the people who do the recognizing have failed so often before.
But the most emotionally resonant moment came from an artist who was a relative unknown when last year’s Grammys rolled around. The 2025 Grammys became Doechii’s breakout moment. She not only won Best Rap Album, becoming just the third woman to do so, but she stole the show with yet another performance that looked like something from a seasoned performer. When Doechii took the stage to accept her award, tears flowing from her face, it was a moment of recognition for someone who truly deserved it. The Grammys are so often late to acknowledge deserving artists, and even later when they’re Black women. To see Doechii get the appropriate recognition and her joy was a balm. Her acceptance speech only added to the moment.
“I know that there is some Black girl out there,” she said. “So many Black women out there that are watching me right now and I want to tell you: You can do it. Anything is possible. Anything is possible. Don’t allow anybody to project any stereotypes on you, that tell you that you can’t be here, that you’re too dark or that you’re not smart enough or that you’re too dramatic or you’re too loud. You are exactly who you need to be, to be right where you are, and I am a testimony.”
The first month of 2025 has been all about misguided ideas of DEI and the notion that Black people achieving anything is based on something other than merit. That everything that goes wrong is because unqualified Black folks have somehow been elevated to positions they don’t deserve. Our work, brilliance and existence has been under siege. And yet, for one night, Black artists took to an award show that has also spent years invalidating our greatness — and celebrated.
The Grammys are still flawed, and I still walk away from Sunday night with criticisms (namely that Beyoncé was more deserving of previous awards and the fact Grammy “firsts” are still happening for Black folks in 2025 is inexcusable). But for one night, the show gave us space to be happy. Right now, I’ll take those good feelings from anywhere I can get them.
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