Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff were the first to ever take home a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance with their hit single “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” To them, the moment was not only going to mean personal achievement but was actually going to change hip-hop history. The boys’ win meant that the genre would be accepted into the mainstream world and be recognized on one of the most prestigious music award shows in the world: the Grammys.
Will Smith, then only a few years into his career, has spoken of this award time and again as not only a win for himself but for hip-hop culture. Smith has made it known in interviews just how this win validated hip-hop as an art form to show the world that rap wasn’t some fad, but it was one incredibly strong cultural movement. For Smith, the success here was an important breakthrough that finally allowed the rap artist of the future to be recognized as a musician or artist in his or her own right.
But despite that breakthrough, Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff led the headlines for boycotting the 1989 Grammy Awards. Why? The rap category wasn’t televised-a surefire sign to them that the music trade still didn’t respect the genre.
“We refused to go because it was an insult,” Smith said later to any reporters who would listen. “How could they give out a category and not even consider it worthy of being on the air like all the other categories?.
To understand the import of this win, it is helpful to consider the Grammy voting process, which remains cryptic for many. The Grammy Awards are a presentation by the Recording Academy, an organization that consists of industry professionals from artists to producers and engineers. The process unfolds in several stages:
Submission: The record labels and members of the Academy submit the songs and albums for Grammy consideration.
Screening: This committee views all the submissions with a view to categorizing them appropriately.
First Round Voting: The members of the Academy vote for entries presented before them to come up with a nominee list.
Final Round Voting: The final nominees are voted on, and the winners are selected by the members of the Academy.
Rap was still trying to receive respect, and all kinds of mainstream critics would dismiss the culture as some sort of seasonal anomaly. But this Grammy triumph proved hip-hop was to stay. This was also a moment in history that, for Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff, opened doors for rappers in the future. Without their groundbreaking accomplishment, it’s possible that many of the rap legends to follow, such as Tupac, Notorious B.I.G., and Jay-Z, wouldn’t have been given quite the same credibility into such prestigious institutions as the Grammys.
