Last night’s Grammy Awards were decent. There were moments where I certainly tuned out and those where I was fully engaged, mainly the Prince Tribute and Queen Bey’s performance. But night ended on a bit of a sour and controversial note when Beyoncé’s <em>Lemonade</em> lost the most coveted Album of The Year award to Adele’s <em>25</em>.
Everyone knew it was a sham, most notably Adele herself.
When she took the stage to accept her award, wearing a lemon pin, Adele thanked her co-writers, fans and then said she could not possibly accept the award.
<blockquote><em>“But I can’t possibly accept this award. And I’m very humbled, and very grateful and gracious. My artist of my life is Beyoncé. And this album for me, the Lemonade album was just so monumental, Beyoncé, it was so monumental and so well-thought out, and so beautiful and soul-baring. And we all got to see another side to you that you don’t always let us see. And we appreciate that. And all us artists here, we f*cking adore you. You are our light. And the way you make me and my friends feel, the way you make my Black friends feel is empowering. And you make them stand up for themselves. And I love you. I always have and I always will.”</em></blockquote>
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I was tweeting from the <em>MadameNoire</em> account last night and was particularly impressed with the speech. After all, this not the first time a Black artist has been robbed of the Album of the Year award. We all remember when Beck won over Beyoncé in 2013. Or when Macklemore won over Kendrick in 2014. I remember that while our Twitter feed was outraged, and Kanye made sure he voiced his opinion, there was little talk from either artist about the people they beat out.
I tweeted, “The way you make my Black friends feel…Respect forever for that.”
I was hit with a quick succession of tweets signifying that people didn’t agree with the sentiment. The most memorable from Angela Rye.
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<p dir="ltr" lang="und">Nah. <a href="https://t.co/1szL6Tduvg">https://t.co/1szL6Tduvg</a></p>
— a. rye✊🏾 (@angela_rye) <a href="https://twitter.com/angela_rye/status/831000250357862400">February 13, 2017</a></blockquote>
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More than anything, I was confused as hell. I saw no lies in Adele’s speech and I couldn’t understand the issue behind her using the words “Black friends.” After all, she was speaking specifically about the way <em>Lemonade</em> spoke to her... Black friends. How else should she have qualified them, when she was speaking specifically to racial pride and empowerment?
I asked a variant of those questions from our Twitter account last night, like 'Are y’all telling me <em>Lemonade</em> meant the same thing to White women that it meant to us?!' It was rhetorical really. I don't need anyone to tell me it had the same impact on White women. I will just never believe that. White women can relate to pain and healing and forgiveness all day long. But when the words of Malcolm X, talking about the Black woman being the most disrespected in the world play, with faces of southern Black women flashing across the screen, I know White women didn’t feel that in their soul like we did. When we saw the mothers of the movement in “Freedom,” White women might have cried at the injustice but I doubt they asked themselves whether or not they would ever be featured in such a video because they had to bury a child gunned down by police.
I’m happy to hear that White people appreciate it, dance to it. And I’m not surprised. That’s the history of Black art, especially music, in this country. So I couldn’t understand the beef. Later, <a href="https://twitter.com/angela_rye/status/831008058541105153">Angela Rye released a periscope</a> explaining her initial gripe.
She started off the video explaining that the album was not just for Black people, it was for all people. She mentioned the fact that the last time a Black artist won album of the year was Herbie Hancock in 2008 and before him, Lauryn Hill in 1999.
Then she got to Adele and the issue she had with her speech, which is what I came for.
<blockquote><em>“I loved her speech. I loved the fact that she said she wanted to dedicate the Grammy to Beyoncé and that she thought Beyoncé deserved it. I agree. The challenge comes in when she said that the album spoke to her friends and then she talked about her Black friends. My issue here is not that Adele has Black friends. My issue here is that she utilized that platform to talk about it empowering her Black friends but not what she could do as a White woman with privilege to help advance the many causes. We saw all types of resist messages tonight. And that would have been an amazing way to end the night to say , ‘I stand with you to opposing anything that resembles hate. I stand with you all in protecting Black lives. I stand with you all in saying Black Lives Matter. Beyoncé, I stand with you from your “Formation” performance during the Super Bowl when you were paying tribute to the Black panthers and people came for Beyoncé out of everywhere to criticize that performance. It’s not enough to say that you have Black friends that you empower. It is enough to say I am so proud that you’ve empowered folks and I’m standing with you all in solidarity against oppression, against discrimination, against racism…It’s not enough to be like ‘Oh I love you and Black people everywhere.’ What does the manifestation of your love look like.”</em></blockquote>
Well, to me, there are several ways to be an ally. Adele is not Angela and she doesn’t have to speak like her in order to prove that she’s really for Black people. If you ask me what the manifestation of love for a Black woman looks like, I’d say it’s most definitely you saying you can’t accept an award because a Black woman’s album was better than yours. It looks like you speaking to the special way in which that album impacts people who are marginalized and often forgotten and calling those people out, specifically. Black. It looks like you, in a press conference that should be about your album, taking the time to speak about the worldwide cultural relevance of a Black woman’s body of work. And it looks like bringing your allied thoughts and opinions to the Academy, of which Adele is a voting member, who as she said in a press conference backstage voted for Beyoncé.
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— danial (@hoopearingz) <a href="https://twitter.com/hoopearingz/status/831012465156698113">February 13, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<em>“The reason I felt the need to say something is because my Album of the Year is Lemonade…The way that I felt when I first heard ‘No, No, No.” was exactly the same as how I felt when I heard Lemonade last year. And for an artist to be—the other people who made me feel like that, they’re all dead. I’m living off of music that they made when they were alive. Whereas for her to be making such relevant music for that long of a period and still affect all of us…I don’t take any f*cking sh*t when it comes to anyone not liking Beyoncé, you can’t be in my life. You simply can’t. Also, I felt like it was her time to win. My view is kind of ‘What the f*ck does she have to do to win album of the year?’ That’s also how I feel…Obviously the visual is very new and the Grammys are very traditional and I just thought that this year would be the year that they kind of go with the tide.”</em></blockquote>
I get Angela Rye’s point that Adele could have said specifically that this was an issue about race. Or she could have used like Black Lives Matter, or "I stand in solidarity" but to me, all of those sentiments reverberated in her speech. She said the album was better. She spoke truth to power by calling out the academy and using her involvement in the group to vote for <em>Lemonade </em>when her own work was nominated. She spoke about the cultural relevance of it to Black people. And not just on an entertainment level but to speak to empowerment, speaks to a knowledge that Black folk are disenfranchised. And her support of the work, speaks to her support of the messages included in them because she’s seen, as a White woman, that they affect Black folk differently. White allies are hard to come by and I would hate to think that other White folk would be discouraged from speaking up against other injustices because Adele didn’t drop a few catch phrases from the movement, particularly when her words clearly indicate her heart.
<span class="im"><i>Veronica Wells is the culture editor at MadameNoire.com. She is also the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bettah-Days-Veronica-R-Wells/dp/1535549866" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.amazon.com/Bettah-Days-Veronica-R-Wells/dp/1535549866&source=gmail&ust=1487088874811000&usg=AFQjCNG3EwsQtiYHmbD4kN7UApOKU3UXFg">“Bettah Days.”</a> You can follow her on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/veronicarwells" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.facebook.com/veronicarwells&source=gmail&ust=1487088874811000&usg=AFQjCNFCl0J5W2f2hbLNJr5EYDX2llJNIg">Facebook</a> and Twitter<a href="https://twitter.com/VDubShrug" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://twitter.com/VDubShrug&source=gmail&ust=1487088874811000&usg=AFQjCNHJfALEddmWHY4XWnQXSwXlEqs7-w"> @VDubShrug.</a></i> </span>
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