Ahead of his upcoming Pepsi Super Bowl LV Halftime Show halftime show, The Weeknd spoke about being shut out from the 2021 Grammy Awards in his new cover story with Billboard.
Reflecting on the lack of nominations for his chart-topping album, After Hours, Abel deemed the snub "an attack." "I use a sucker punch as an analogy," the Canadian star said of the debacle. "Because it just kind of hit me out of nowhere. I definitely felt … I felt things. I don’t know if it was sadness or anger. I think it was just confusion. I just wanted answers. Like, ‘What happened?’ We did everything right, I think. I’m not a cocky person. I’m not arrogant. People told me I was going to get nominated. The world told me. Like, 'This is it; this is your year.' We were all very confused."
He even received messages from "people I haven’t spoke to in ages" within entire music industry, who all backed his stance. "I wasn’t mad," his manager Wassim "Sal" Slaiby said of the conversation he had with interim Recording Academy president Harvey Mason Jr. "I was a gentleman. I said ‘Hey, bro, how are you? How’s your day? Our day is sh*t. What the f**k just went down?'"
After Hours and its accompanying singles were shut out of the six categories that his music was submitted in, leading Abel to think about the bigger reason at-hand. "If you were like, ‘Do you think the Grammys are racist?’ I think the only real answer is that in the last 61 years of the Grammys, only 10 Black artists have won album of the year," he declared. "I don’t want to make this about me. That’s just a fact."
With three Grammys to his name, Abel is moving on. "Look, I personally don’t care anymore," he admitted. "I have three Grammys, which mean nothing to me now, obviously. It’s not like, ‘Oh, I want the Grammy!’ It’s just that this happened, and I’m down to get in front of the fire, as long as it never happens again."
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