Social media and media around the world have been buzzing with news about the recent announcement of the 2016 Grammy nominations made by Alicia Keys, herself a 15-time Grammy Award winner.
She revealed the musicians vying in the four general field categories: Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year and Best New Artist, including two of Toronto’s musical sons.
The 58th Grammy awards will be handed out Feb. 16 and among the top names is our own Scarborough-born of Ethiopian heritage The Weeknd, (Abel Makkonen Tesfaye) with seven nominations including Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Best Pop Solo Performance and Best R&B Performance.
His Can’t Feel My Face is nominated for Record of the Year along with D’Angelo and the Vanguard for Really Love, Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud and Taylor Swift for Blank Space.
Other Black artists topping the list is American rapper Kendrick Lamar with 11 nominations including Song of the Year for Alright and Album of the Year, To Pimp a Butterfly.
Then there is Wiz Khalifa, rapper, songwriter and writer, featuring Charlie Puth for See You Again, nominated for Song of the Year and Best Pop Duo / Group Performance.
Nominated for Best Rap Performance are Drake for Back to Back, Kendrick Lamar for Alright, Nicki Minaj featuring Drake and Lil Wayne for Truffle Butter and Nicki Minaj featuring Drake and Lil Wayne and Kanye West featuring Theophilus London, Allan Kingdom and Paul McCartney for All Day.
Big Sean featuring Kanye West and John Legend, Only Man Can Change the World, along with Only by Nicki Minaj featuring Drake, Lil Wayne and Chris Brown were nominated for Best Rap / Sung Collaboration.
For more information, visit www.grammy.com/nominees.