Really, GRAMMYs?

Originally published: February 17, 2016 

"Bad Blood" teaser, featuring Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar

To Pimp A Butterfly (Kendrick Lamar's latest album and winner of the Best Rap Album Grammy 2016) is blowing my mind right now. What an amazing, gutsy piece of true art! His nominated video "Alright" should have won the Grammy for best music video, in my opinion — that "Bad Blood" won (even made the list!) doesn't surprise me, but it couldn't have been for the right reasons. I'm not here to hate on Swift (I personally find her amicable and enjoy her music quite a bit), but I simply do not understand the acclaim this video has gotten. It's a decent, catchy song (and the irony of it is that Lamar himself is in it), but the music video itself is preposterous and honestly genuinely bad, for lack of a more eloquent description or an effort to be more specific; at this point I just really can't be bothered. Every other video in the category was a thousand times more deserving, and I think it only takes watching them all once to understand why.

In the end, award shows don't really matter, of course ... I just felt like acknowledging this (minor) injustice regardless, because I think what we value and enjoy does matter, and these kinds of things are often a sign of the times. So, if city-engulfing explosions and a redundant amount of friend-of-artist cameos in badly choreographed fight scenes serving a seemingly petty purpose is your thing, then enjoy. As for me, I'd much rather watch this.