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BET Hip Hop Awards 2016 - Alternative Views

Source: Paras Griffin/BET / Getty

This one’s for the culture.

According to a new report by Variety, the Recording Academy plans to make some major changes to the voting process ahead of next year’s Grammy Awards. Much to our pleasure, many of these changes should benefit the hip hop community.

During a phone conversation with Academy SVP of Awards Bill Freimuth, it was explained that the Academy hopes to increase voter participation by switching to online voting. Two other big changes Freimuth discussed include songwriters being recognized in the Album of the Year category, as well as nomination review committees being established for the Rap, Contemporary Instrumental, and New Age fields to better reflect what each community believes to be the best music in each category.

“The most recent [prior community] we heard from about this was Rock. People felt there was too much of a lean toward legacy artists and the softer side of rock, and this year we heard from Rap, Contemporary Instrumental and New Age. For Rap, and the other categories to a degree, a lot of their argument was kind of similar — it was going more to big-name folks and felt like more of a popularity contest. That’s not to say that someone who’s very famous can’t put out a fantastic track or album, but maybe some younger up-and-coming folks deserve that spotlight,” Freimuth told Variety.

All changes go into effect immediately. Get the scoop on the rest of the rules here and Tweet us your thoughts on whether or not it’s too soon to drop the #GrammysSoWhite hashtag.

Grammy Awards Rules Change Is About To Majorly Shake Up Hip Hop  was originally published on globalgrind.com