The Grammys Say Chance The Rapper Had Nothing to Do With Streaming-Only Albums Being Eligible

The nominations for the 59th annual Grammy awards were announced Tuesday (Dec. 6), and Chance The Rapper is at the top of the list, racking up seven total nods, including Best New Artist and Best Rap Album. That second inclusion is notable, because Coloring Book is the first streaming-only project to be made eligible for a Grammy. Chance petitioned the Recording Academy to include projects that are only available via streaming, and soon after they gave in.

But when XXL spoke to the Head of Awards Bill Freimuth on Tuesday, he said Chance's petition had nothing to do with the Grammys deciding to include streaming-only albums.

"I’d say [Chance's petition] had no influence at all," Freimuth said. "Streaming is an issue that we’ve been talking about for a couple years now and seeing how it came on the horizon and got on our radar, we started thinking about what our response or approach to streaming should be. We gave it a lot of diligent work and thought and discussion among music makers and we came up with this rule last year that allowed streaming-only releases to be part of the mix.

“One of the things that a lot of people are confused about is there really are few artists who choose to go streaming-only," he continued. "If it is on streaming, it’s also on download or on CD or vinyl or whatever. We don’t think it amounted to much of an increase in our overall submissions, and yet it makes us feel like we did the right thing in terms of being current and being proactive and reactive to changes in the industry. We’re pleased as punch that it allowed Chance to be in competition this year because he’s a wonderful artist.”

Freimuth also gave some clarification about why, when every other category has five nominees, there are six nominees for Best Rap Album (Chance's Coloring Book, Kanye's The Life of Pablo, Drake's Views, Khaled's Major Key, ScHoolboy Q's Blank Face and De La Soul's And the Anonymous Nobody). It turns out the voting members of the Academy had a stalemate when voting for the rap albums that would be included, and due to the tie, they had to include a sixth album instead of making a decision. Which two albums tied, he wouldn't say.

 Fans React to 2017 Grammy Nominations