The Grammys mistakenly declared Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice as the winners for Best Rap Song on Sunday evening (instead of Killer Mike), in a post shared to X (formerly Twitter). The winners for the rap categories were announced during the Grammys Premiere Ceremony, during which the majority of the winners are revealed.
Rapper, activist, and Atlanta legend Killer Mike swept all three rap categories — Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song, and Best Album — for Scientists & Engineers featuring André 3000, Future, and Eryn Allen Kane, which is on his aforementioned winning album Michael.
The nominees for Best Rap Song alongside Killer Mike included Doja Cat's Attention, Lil Uzi Vert's Just Wanna Rock, Drake and 21 Savage's Rich Flex, and Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice featuring Aqua's Barbie World from Barbie the Album.
Doja really went all out in a sheer corset gown.
After Best Rap Song was announced, the Recording Academy's official X account wrongly named Nicki and Ice Spice as the winners. They soon deleted the mistake and made a new post about 13 minutes later naming Killer Mike as the correct winner.
Journalist Ernest Owens, who was in attendance at the Premiere Ceremony, clarified that there was no true winner mix-up a la Moonlight and La La Land at the 2017 Oscars — just a social media blunder. “TO BE CLEAR: #GRAMMYs announced Killer Mike's name in all three categories — without any confusion,” Owens wrote on X. “Whoever is working that @RecordingAcad account is the one causing confusion... because the envelope read Killer Mike. I'm sitting front row right now, for clarity.”
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The mistake sparked outrage for Nicki Minaj fans, as the win - if correct - would have been the very first for the rapper who has 12 career nominations to date. “Fan or no fan, y’all really gotta peep what she be talking about,” wrote one fan on X. “TO NEVER MAKE A MISTAKE LIKE THIS BEFORE but pull something like this when it comes to Nicki? This was a calculated attempt to embarrass her and this be what she’s talking about.” Some fans called out the Grammys as “fraudulent” while others pointed to a conspiracy of “the industry plotting against her” and “playing in her face.”
As noted by The Hollywood Reporter, Nicki has long-standing beef with the Recording Academy, speaking out against the Grammys categorisation of her music and the awarding process in both 2022 and 2020. When her hit single Super Freaky Girl was considered in the pop category and not rap in 2022, Nicki criticised the Academy on Instagram, saying, "They stay moving the goalposts when it comes to me. Why is the goalpost only ever moved when it’s Nicki?”
In multiple Instagram Story posts, Nicki alleged that the decision was made “to decrease my chances of winning awards for Super Freaky Girl.” "It was done to remove me from the category that they don’t want COMPETITION in!!!!!!! They are all scared to death of the success of that song & thought it would be super EASY for them (like it’s been for the last few years) but ‘SFG’ is such a global smash, certain members are AFRAID to keep it in the competition,” she wrote at the time.
In 2020, Nicki spoke out against the Grammys for their Best New Artist decision in 2012. “Never forget the Grammys didn’t give me my best new artist award when I had 7 songs simultaneously charting on Billboard & bigger first week that any female rapper in the last decade- went on to inspire a generation,” she wrote at the time on Twitter.
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Meanwhile, Ice Spice was nominated at the Grammys 2024 for three awards in addition to Best Rap Song: Best New Artist, Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, and Best Song Written for Visual Media.
This article originally appeared in Teen Vogue.
