Fighting to Be Heard

The Black musician’s troubled relationship with the GRAMMYs

At the 59th Grammys celebration in February, Beyoncé took the stage, pregnant with twins, and adorned in a golden dress that took 50 people to embroider.

“We all experience pain and loss,” she said, in her queen-like glory. “And often, we become inaudible.”

This was part of her acceptance speech for winning the Best Urban Contemporary Album for Lemonade, a monumental visual album she made to “give a voice to our pain, our struggles, our darkness, and our history.” Beyoncé would have been the first black woman to win Album of the Year since Lauryn Hill won in 1999 for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

Instead, millions of fans watched as the most iconic, black, modern entertainer accepted a consolation prize. Indeed, Todd VanDer Werff, of Vox.com, writes that Beyoncé was nominated for the award because the Academy feared she might lose in three of the “Big Four” categories she was nominated for, and be denied the chance to speak on TV at all.

The Big Four are: Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year — The only awards that every musician, from every genre, is eligible to win. And yet, according to the Washington Post, pop and rock artists have been nominated for 47 percent…