According to Variety, Drake has withdrawn his two Grammy nominations for 2022. Best Rap Album (for Certified Lover Boy) and Best Rap Performance (for “Way 2 Sexy”) were both nominated for the rapper. Drake and his management, according to Variety, made the choice to withdraw from the Grammys. According to Variety, there will be no alternative nominees in the two categories.
Other recent changes to the Grammy nominees for 2022 include Marilyn Manson losing one of his nominations (Best Rap Song for Kanye West’s “Jail”) owing to modifications to the composition credits, and Linda Chorney receiving a nomination for Best American Roots Song. Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff, and Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) were all nominated for Album of the Year despite their contributions to Sour.
Drake has expressed frustrations with the Grammy Awards and the Recording Academy in the past. Last year, after the Weeknd received zero nominations for the 2021 Grammys, Drake wrote in an Instagram Story, “I think we should stop allowing ourselves to be shocked every year by the disconnect between impactful music and these awards and just accept that what once was the highest form of recognition may no longer matter to the artist that exist now and the ones that come after.” He continued, “It’s like a relative you keep expecting to fix up but they just won’t change their ways. The other day I said [the Weeknd] was a lock for either album or song of the year along with countless other reasonable assumptions and it just never goes that way. This is a great time for somebody to start something new that we can build up overtime and pass on to the generations to come.”