Jay Z tops Grammy nominations tally
RAPPER Jay Z led all artists with nine Grammy nominations on Friday, but newcomers Lorde, Kendrick Lamar, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis edged out industry heavyweights for nods in the top categories of the annual music awards.
Jay Z’s nominations in the pop and rap categories included best pop duo performance for Suit & Tie with Justin Timberlake, and best rap album for his July release, Magna Carta . . . Holy Grail. But the 44year-old Brooklyn, New York-born rapper failed to land solo nods in the top Grammy categories for record, song and album of the year, scoring only a producer nod on Lamar’s Good Kid, MAAD City, which is nominated in the album of the year category.
In that category, Lamar will face off against Sara Barielles’s The Blessed Unrest, French electrodance duo Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, Taylor Swift’s Red and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s The Heist.
Timberlake, who made a return to the musical spotlight this year after a five-year hiatus with the two-part release of The 20/20 Experience, picked up seven nominations across the pop, R&B and rap categories, but also failed to make the top three categories.
Seattle rapper-producer duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis capped their stellar move over the past year from the independent music scene into mainstream pop with seven nominations, including song of the year for Same Love featuring Mary Lambert, and the coveted best new artist category. The duo will be facing off with Lamar, country music singer Kasey Musgraves and British singers James Blake and Ed Sheeran for the best new artist accolade.
Lamar also picked up nominations in the R&B and rap category, including best rap album.
The record of the year category featured five songs that all achieved commercial and chart success this year: Get Lucky by Daft Punk, Radioactive by alt-rockers Imagine Dragons, Royals by Lorde, Bruno Mars’s Locked Out of Heaven and Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke featuring TI and Pharrell.
The 17-year-old New Zealand newcomer Lorde is notable for writing her own songs, including Royals, which also picked up nods for song of the year and best pop solo performance.
The winners will be announced on January 26. —