Entertainment

Kanye Won't Attend Grammy Awards On This Condition

by Jordana Lipsitz

As much as I love awards shows because they mean celebrities and pretty dresses, I am pretty confident that the truth about these events is that everything is just for fun, and the honors don't really matter. Kanye West, on the other hand, seems to disagree, vowing at his Oakland Saint Pablo show over the weekend that if Frank Ocean's album isn't nominated in any Grammy categories, Yeezy won't appear at the awards show. As gallant as this move may be, there's one issue: according to Billboard, neither Ocean's Blonde nor his visual album, Endless, were submitted for consideration for Grammy nominations by Ocean's labels or management by the registration date. So, there's actually no way Ocean could be nominated. He's ineligible, disqualified — and that means Kanye has no choice but not to attend the Grammys, if he's going to keep his word.

West stopped his California concert to give his two cents on the matter, saying, "Since he’s [Frank Ocean] vocal, no one wants to say nothing about it. No one wants to do nothing about it. I’m saying this to y’all, because a lot of people try to make a scene like, ‘I’m so self-centered," but the album I listened to the most this year is Frank Ocean’s album." Yeah, Yeezy is right — Blonde is pure poetry.

And yet, one has to think that Ocean simply may not have wanted to even be in the running for the Grammys. Surely his management team was aware of the deadline. Besides, the behavior of not following the status quo is pretty common for the musician; remember when he didn't drop his album for a zillion years, and we were all so salty with him but then it turned out to be worth it all along because both Blonde and Endless are the diggity-dopest? You remember. This Grammy thing is just par for the course for Ocean.

It's great that West is standing up for Ocean, but it doesn't even sound, really, like the Blonde creator is interested at all. To me, it sort of sounds like West just doesn't want to go to the Grammys for whatever reason and is using Ocean as an excuse. Perhaps Yeezy really just wants to say, "Kim and I are really trying to take it easy and we don't want to go to the Grammys this year. We'll be watching at home in onesies like everyone else." If so, I can totally identify with that.

Images:utorlive/Twitter, Giphy

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