DRAKE GETS EIGHT
Toronto hip-hop star is top Canadian and second only to Beyoncé in Grammy nominations,
Chart-topping albums from Drake and Justin Bieber are in the running for several of the major Grammy categories this year, including Album of the Year.
Toronto rapper Drake came away with the most nominations of all Canadian artists, getting eight in total, including one for Best Rap Album for Views.
Only Beyoncé has more nominations, with nine, while Rihanna and Kanye West also have eight.
Among Bieber’s four nominations are nods for Best Song and Best Pop Solo Performance for “Love Yourself” from his album Purpose. The Stratford, Ont.-raised singer is also nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album.
Drake and Bieber will compete with Queen Bey’s Lemonade in the Album of the Year category, alongside Adele’s 25 and surprise nominee A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, the third album from respected and rebellious country singer Sturgill Simpson.
Adele, with a mere five nominations, is also in the running for Record and Song of the Year for “Hello,” competing against Beyoncé’s “Formation,” Drake and Rihanna’s “Work,” twenty one pilots’ “Stressed Out” and Lukas Graham’s “7 Years.”
“Hello,” “Formation” and “7 Years” join Bieber’s “Love Yourself” and Mike Posner’s “I Took a Pill in Ibiza,” in the song category. Beyoncé, who already has 20 Grammys and is the most nominated woman in Grammy history with 62, is also the first artist to earn nominations in the pop, rock, R&B and rap categories in the same year.
She’s up for Best Rock Performance (“Don’t Hurt Yourself” with Jack White), Pop Solo Performance (“Hold Up”), Rap/Sung Performance (“Freedom” with Kendrick Lamar) and Urban Contemporary Album ( Lemonade).
Beyoncé was snubbed, though, in the Best R&B Song and R&B Performance categories, which she has dominated in the past.
So was Solange’s A Seat at the Table in the Best Urban Contemporary Album category and Chris Brown’s Royalty, which didn’t earn a single nod. Other snubs include Shawn Mendes, who was considered a shooin for Best New Artist, and Coldplay, who earned only one nomination for Best Music Video and was shut out of the rock honours.
Another striking absence is Drake’s song “One Dance.”
By far one of the biggest hits of the year, the song was not nominated for any award.
Kanye West, meanwhile, has won nearly two dozen Grammy awards but has never taken home a majorcategory trophy and this year is no different.
Despite the eight nominations for West’s The Life of Pablo, the only major nod came for his production work on Drake’s Views.
On the other hand, Chance the Rapper, a first-time nominee, has seven nominations thanks to a rule change that opened the door for music not available in more traditional forms.
His debut album Coloring Book was issued in May only as a music stream rather than as a physical CD, oldschool mixtape or digital download.
His nominations include Best New Artist, pitting him against country singers Maren Morris and Kelsea Ballerini, singer-rapper Anderson .Paak and pop-EDM duo the Chainsmokers.
Chance earned three nominations for Best Rap Song, for his own hit “No Problem,” and writing credits on Kanye West songs “Famous” and “Ultralight Beam.”
Coloring Book and The Life of Pablo are nominated for Best Rap Album along with Views, De La Soul’s And the Anonymous Nobody, DJ Khaled’s Major Key and Schoolboy Q’s Blank Face LP.
Other first-time nominees include Solange, Blink-182 and Demi Lovato, who will compete against Adele, Bieber, Sia and Ariana Grande for Best Pop Vocal Album.
David Bowie earned four posthumous nominations for his final album Blackstar, which he recorded last year while dealing with terminal cancer, including Best Rock Performance, Rock Song, Alternative Music Album and Engineered Album, Non-Classical.
The latter category includes the only nod to Prince, who died in April, with a nomination for his Hit N Run Phase Two collection.
Other Canadians vying for prizes include Vancouver electronic act Bob Moses for Best Dance Recording as well as Best Remix Recording; Calgary-born James Teej, also for Best Remix Recording; Toronto rapper Tory Lanez and Mississauga-raised rapper PartyNextDoor, both for Best R&B Song; Toronto’s Nineteen85 for Best Rap Song with Drake and as Producer of the Year, Non-Classical; Northern Cree of Saddle Lake Cree Nation for Best Regional Roots Music Album; Newmarket-born Steven Lee Olsen for Best Country Song for Keith Urban’s “Blue Ain’t Your Color”; Vancouver-born Miles Jay for Best Music Video for Leon Bridges’ “River”; and Toronto’s ARC Ensemble for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. With files from The Canadian Press, The Associated Press, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times