Everyone from fans to music industry insiders had an opinion on the 2016 Grammy Awards nominees once they were revealed last week -- for better or for worse. The annual awards ceremony, taking place on Feb. 13, is music's biggest night, with the nominations list giving some major props to hip-hop. Kendrick Lamar leads artists in all genres with 11 nods for his work, proving his To Pimp a Butterfly album truly resonated with the people this year.

The equivalent to a superlatives section of a high school year book, the Grammys doles out awards to arguably deserving artists in categories like Album of the Year, Song of the Year to Best, Rap Performance and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. Before the ceremony even begins, there's already a category clouded in controversy: Best New Artist. Like with all awards show nominations, there are some glaring omissions and one artist with good reason to have beef with the Grammy committee is Fetty Wap.

The New Jersey native, who emerged on the rap scene in late 2014 under the guise of the Trojan Horse that was his hit single, "Trap Queen," was nominated for Best Rap Performance, but was locked out of the highly coveted Best New Artist category. The snub got quite a rise out of the hip-hop community, who had a few things to say about the news, most notably 50 Cent. Two days after the Grammys nominees were revealed, the rapper shared his thoughts on Fetty's snub. “My Best New Artist Award go's [sic] to, Fetty Wap," 50 wrote as a caption to an Instagram post featuring Fetty's album cover.

Fif also made sure to remind fans of his own prickly dealings with the Grammy committee after being snubbed for the Best New Artist award himself in 2004. "He put some real hits out this year," 50 wrote of Fetty. "There over looking him. They did the same thing to me. Get Rich Or Die Trying, 13 million copy's sold [sic]." The G-Unit general wasn't the only one to speak up on Fetty Wap's behalf, with a large number of rap fans on social media also taking note of the rising star's name excluded from the Best New Artist nominees and calling shenanigans on what many took as a slight to rap as a whole.

Singer Tori Kelly, indie rocker James Bay, country star Sam Hunt, singing guitarist Courtney Barnett and pop darling Meghan Trainor are all in the running for Best New Artist at the February ceremony. All five nominees experienced a stellar 2015 in their own right, but outside of Trainor, none of the four other artists had as big of a year as Fetty Wap.

For one, only two of the four -- Kelly and Hunt -- scored top five debuts on the Billboard 200 with their respective solo albums and both failed to top the chart. Fetty's self-titled debut achieved that feat in its first week of release to the tune of 129,000 album units sold and score the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200.

Being that hit radio singles are a huge barometer for which artists get nominated, Fetty Wap can also have a gripe there. Of the five aforementioned artists, only Trainor placed a single in the top five of the Billboard Hot 100, with "All About That Bass" peaking atop the chart and "Move My Lips" and "Like I'm Gonna Lose You" peaking at No. 4 and No. 8, respectively. Some naysayers may point to the critical acclaim that Barnett, Kelly, Hunt, Bay and Trainor received from the press, but Fetty Wap was fawned over by the biggest tastemakers in the industry.

His hit-making ability shouldn't be in question given the fact that he's dropped four tracks -- "Trap Queen," "My Way," "679" and "Again" -- that are among the most successful songs of the year. He didn't even have a debut album out yet before he was breaking records on the Billboard charts. Fetty was the first artist to simultaneously have four singles on the Billboard Top 10 rap songs chart. The last artist to do that was 50 Cent in 2005 -- he was the first to have four concurrent songs in the top 10. However, on one song he was a featured artist whereas Fetty Wap is the lead artist in all four of his charting tracks.

XXL recognized Fetty's Drake-assisted "My Way" remix in the 20 Best Songs of 2015 list, highlighting the fact that the rapper "shot down any mention of being a one-hit wonder" after he released "Trap Queen." Then there's Rolling Stone, who ranked "Trap Queen" as the No. 2 song on the reputed music bible's year-end list, beating out all tracks from the acts nominated for Best New Artist. Even Billboard praised the merits of the unlikely crossover single after putting it on their Top 10 Songs of 2015 (So Far) list in June.

After gathering up all of that evidence, it's more than valid to question if Fetty Wap's role as a young black male from an under-appreciated artform may have played a part in the Grammy committee's decision to eliminate him from the Best New Artist category. Fetty Wap certainly isn't receiving his just due and judging from the Grammys past dealings with hip-hop, that hunch has more than a little plausibility to it.

The 1990 Grammy Awards mark an important moment for hip-hop. That year's ceremony was the first time a rapper was nominated for Best New Artist and had a pretty strong case to win. West Coast rap sensation Tone Loc goes down in history as receiving that nomination honor. The ceremony was also memorable for Milli Vanilli being stripped of their Best New Artist win due to a lip-syncing scandal. Unfortunately, no winner was ever named in their place.

Competing against Soul II Soul, Indigo Girls and singer-rapper Neneh Cherry, Tone Loc was the only artist outside of Milli Vanilli to score two top five singles on the Billboard Hot 100 with the crossover hits "Funky Cold Medina" and "Wild Thing," as well as having his debut album peak atop the Billboard 200. Contrast that with Fetty Wap scoring a No. 1 hit with "Trap Queen" and having his own LP debut at No. 1 on the charts and it's a head-scratcher as to why his resume doesn't stack up in the eyes of the Grammy committee who selects the nominees.

Tone Loc not being awarded the trophy for Best New Artist may have been a travesty, but the Grammys had a rare case of clarity when rap group Arrested Development beat out Billy Ray Cyrus, Jon Secada, Sophie B. Hawkins and kiddie-rap sensations Kriss Kross in 1993. Arrested Development enjoyed a monster 1992, during which they released three top ten singles ("Everyday People, "Tennessee" and "Mr. Wendel") and were named Band of the Year by Rolling Stone. The win may have been a big look for hip-hop, but could also be seen as a subtle diss to all of the gangster rap that was permeating pop culture at the time, most notably made by Snoop Doog, who could give Fetty Wap more than a little advice on being snubbed by the Grammys -- he's been nominated 16 times and has never won.

Snoop Dogg's debut album, Doggystyle, was one of the most anticipated albums in hip-hop, surpassing the mark for most records sold by a debut artist in its first week with 806,858 copies. The album featured two top ten singles in "What's My Name" and "Gin and Juice," and cemented Snoop as America's resident bad boy. This may have contributed to him not being nominated for Best New Artist at the 1995 Grammys despite Doggystyle ending 1994 at No. 3 on Billboard's year-end list, two spots ahead of Counting Crows' August and Everything After, and 50 spots ahead of Crash Test Dummies, both of whom beat out the Doggfather for a Grammy nomination.

The rapper being left out of the Best New Artist nominees in 1995 was a backhand to hip-hop of epic proportions, but what occurred at the 1998 Grammys would be the biggest sign of disrespect shown by the academy when it comes to the genre. The Best New Artist category included Hanson, Erykah Badu, Fiona Apple, Puff Daddy and Paula Cole, all of whom had contributed to one of the most solid years in music of the decade.

Coming off of the year's biggest rap release with his debut, No Way Out, Puff Daddy was all but a shoo-in to be the first male solo rapper to take home hardware in the category to date. But Puff, who released four singles in 1997 that claimed either the No. 1 or No. 2 slot on the Billboard 200, was robbed by Paula Cole, who was awarded Best New Artist largely on the strength of her mainstream anthem, "I Don't Wanna Wait," which failed to crack the top 10 of the Hot 100.

Another glaring disparity was the success of their respective albums. Cole's This Fire peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard 200 while Puff topped the chart with No Way Out. Simply put, Puff, much like Fetty Wap, was more than deserving of Best New Artist by every metric imaginable and his loss was prime evidence of the Grammys bias against hip-hop.

Despite its growing influence on pop culture, hip-hop would continue to catch the short end of the stick throughout the aughts and beyond, with a few of rap's current big dogs having been bitten on the hand by the Grammys. 50 Cent is one of the more notable cases, having lost the Best New Artist award to Evanescence at the 2004 Grammy Awards. An upset considering he broke the Billboard record in 2003, for the most listened-to song in radio history in one week with "In Da Club." The lead single from 50's debut LP Get Rich or Die Tryin' LP -- the highest selling album of 2003 -- claimed the top spot on the Billboard 100 for nine straight weeks and was the No. 1 song on Billboard's year-end chart.

Male rappers aren't the only victims when it comes to their dismissal in the Best New Artist category. In 2012, Nicki Minaj lost to Bon Iver, an indie folk band whose sophomore LP earned 104,000 copies in its first week of release compared to the Queens MC's Pink Friday selling 375,000 copies -- both of their projects landed at the No. 2 spot on the Billboard 200 when they dropped.

Two artists from the hip-hop crowd that managed to maneuver around politics and bias were Lauryn Hill, who snagged Best New Artist and Album of the Year in 1998, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, who took top honors in 2014. But even those victories have to be taken with a grain of salt.

Lauryn Hill, whose solo debut, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, was the biggest release for a female rapper in the genre's history, earned her Best New Artist trophy off the strength of an album that predominantly consisted of R&B songs. Hill having to be a multi-faceted artist rather than a strictly a rapper to win the award should tell you all you need to know about the Grammys history of shunning rap and favoring vocalists. From 1990 (when the first rapper was nominated for Best New Artist) to 1999, she was just the second rapper to receive the honor of Best New Artist. Hill joined Arrested Development as artists that were recognized due to their safe content and knack for melody over what it seems the Grammy committee would perceive as more hardcore musings from the likes of Diddy, 50 Cent, and now, Fetty Wap.

After Lauryn Hill's 1999 Grammy win for Best New Artist, hip-hop dominated popular music. According to Nielsen Soundscan, hip-hop was a constant among the top 10 best selling albums throughout much of the 2000s. Eminem, who was snubbed for a Best New Artist nod himself, kicked off the new millennium in grand fashion by becoming the first rapper to have one of the top three highest selling albums of the year after moving nearly eight million copies of his The Marshall Mathers LP in 2000. Playing a big part in cementing hip-hop's footing in greater suburbia and its ascension to the top of the industry food chain, Eminem would eventually best all comers in 2002 when his fourth studio album, The Eminem Show, become the highest selling album of 2002.

The rest of the aughts featured numerous artists claiming spots within the top ten, most notably 50 Cent and OutKast, who claimed the No. 1 and No. 5 spots on the total sales list in 2003 with their respective blockbuster releases, signaling rap's stronghold on pop culture. The next rap artist to lap the field in terms of sales comes from Cash Money prince turned Young Money king Lil Wayne. Less than five years after claiming to be the best rapper alive, Weezy became the most bankable star in only rap, but all of music by selling 2.8 million copies of his career-defining album, Tha Carter III. The album, which was No. 1 that year, beat out acts like Taylor Swift, Metallica and Coldplay for top honors and reminded the music industry that rap was here to stay.

Billboard and Soundscan aren't the only indicators of hip-hop's reign; even scientists claim hip-hop is the most important genre of music to emerge in the last 50 years. The research, led by teams from Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL) and Imperial College, used computer software to group according to their musical properties and keyed in on three distinct periods: The British invasion of America, the new-wave era of the '80s, and 1991 when rap entered the higher reaches of the Billboard charts. Out of the three musical revolutions, rap is said to be the most far-reaching, with the scientists concluding that "The rise of rap and related genres appears .. to be the single most important event that has shaped the musical structure of the American charts in the period we studied."

That influence paid dividends when Macklemore & Ryan Lewis won the best new artist award in 2014, becoming the third rapper ever to win the award and the first since Lauryn Hill in 1999. The win was a big achievement for rap, but was bittersweet to say the least when you put Macklemore's numbers up against the likes of former Best New Artist nominees like Diddy and 50 Cent, both of whom lost in huge upsets when they appeared more deserving. "Thrift Shop," Macklemore's biggest hit heading into the 2014 Grammys, peaked at No. 1 on the Hot 100 and kept the spot for six weeks and was the second best selling single of the year, falling short of "I'll Be Missing You" and "In Da Club," which spent nine and eleven week atop the charts, respectively.

Macklemore's 2012 release, The Heist, was a commercial success, but ended the year as the third selling album of 2014 with over a million copies sold, far short of Diddy's No Way Out, which sold three million in 1997, and Get Rich or Die Tryin', which sold nearly eight million in 2003 alone. Add in the fact that Macklemore won the award with the help of a producer (Ryan Lewis), it appears the rapper was considered safe enough by the Grammy committee. Many rap fans would peg his content as politically correct and bringing home the Best New Artist trophy was given a side-eye by many die-hard supporters of the genre.

As of July, hip-hop is the most listened to genre in the world, according to Spotify's analysis of 20 billion tracks and has shown no signs of slowing down with a constant influx of new stars. Out of the five most streamed artists of 2015, three rappers made the top five -- Drake earned top honors, Kanye West came in at No. 3 and Eminem at No. 5. Hip-hop tracks showed up on more playlists per city than any other genre for more than 75 million active users. Spotify is another great indicator of hip-hop's reach. Fetty Wap himself scored a lofty achievement of his own when his self-titled debut was the third-most streamed album of the year on Spotify -- Drake's If You're Reading This It's Too Late was No. 1. Fetty beat out all Best New Artist nominees this year in that feat, which is yet another example of how he dominated 2015.

Fetty Wap being left out of the Best New Artist nominees for the 2016 Grammy Awards comes across as asinine in the truest sense of the word. The hip-hop newcomer even matched a record that only the Beatles can claim with "Trap Queen," "My Way" and "679." In August, those first three singles were all in the the top 11 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The Beatles were the first artists to claim that record in March of 1964. His commercial and critical acclaim is certainly intact and high-profile performances at the 2015 MTV Movie Awards with Fall Out Boy, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live! proves he also appeals to middle America.

With the advent of digital downloads and streaming services, record sales have been dwindling across the board, but nonetheless, rap continues to claim king. However, if you were to let the Grammys tell it, rap has been nothing but a footnote in comparison to the other musical genres that have taken precedence in terms of worth by the committee. Out of the 125 artists that have been nominated for Best New Artist since 1990 (the year the first rapper was nominated) only a mere 12 rappers have been in the running for the win and just three taking home hardware in that 15-year span up until 2014. Those numbers serve as a reminder that even though rap has been noted as the driving force behind pop culture, the genre is under-appreciated and snubbed when it comes to actual recognition for contributions to music.

Unfortunately, the cold hard truth is that it's not anything that Fetty Wap lacks that kept him from being nominated in the Best New Artist category for 2016. Instead, it's seemingly a bias that the Grammys have. Was Fetty Wap snubbed because he's a black male rapper considering only nine (solo or group) have been nominated since 1990? By the standards of Lauryn Hill's Best New Artist win, shouldn't he have been nominated because he both sings and raps? Are the Grammys turning their back on the numbers even though they prove an artist is dominating a genre? These are all interesting questions to pose when you're looking at the Grammys on TV and thinking to yourself that Fetty should be the one onstage accepting the award. It's really a shame he's been snubbed if you ask us, but in the words of Fetty Wap, from his platinum-selling song "Trap Queen," "Everybody hating, we just call them fans though."

See Best Rap Performance Nominees & Winners at the Grammys Over the Years

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