Kanye West and Drake apparently won’t be attending the GRAMMYs this year, according to TMZ, despite each being nominated for eight awards.
A couple months back during a string of rants at the end of the Saint Pablo tour, Kanye said he wouldn’t go the award show if Frank Ocean wasn’t nominated (even though Frank didn’t want to be), so at least he’s sticking to his guns (despite, again, Frank not wanting to be nominated).
Drake will be on his Boy Meets World tour performing a date in Manchester, England, on the Sunday of the award show, which is fine and he’ll probably make himself a cool million instead of sitting through an award show.
For years we’ve talked about the declining significance of the GRAMMYs — or at least the artists’ general disinterest in them — and the 2017 show is just another routine example.
Beyoncé — who leads the nominations — and Chance the Rapper should be there, though, and for an award show I’m pretty much have to watch, that’ll be good enough.
UPDATE: Over the last couple weeks, we learned John Legend and Bruno Mars would perform at the show, which takes place February 12 at 8 p.m. on CBS.
Today, the GRAMMYs announced The Weeknd would be performing with Daft Punk (either “Starboy” or “I Feel It Coming,” or both) at the show. Also announced was a collaborative performance between A Tribe Called Quest, Anderson .Paak and Dave Grohl. So if you needed a reason to tune in, the latter performance might be it.
UPDATE (2/2): Contrary to early report, Dave Grohl will not be joining .Paak and Tribe on stage.
“Earlier this week, we announced that Dave Grohl would be performing with Anderson .Paak and A Tribe Called Quest prior to confirming all participants,” the Recording Academy and AEG Ehrlich Productions said in a statement to Billboard. “Dave Grohl will not be part of this performance. Unfortunately, our announcement was made prematurely.”
