Of this year's 83 Grammy categories, perhaps none were more contentious than best rap album, which garnered some extra attention this year thanks to its only female nominee: Iggy Azalea. The 24-year-old Australian rapper lost to Eminem, the only other white rapper nominated in the category, but Azalea's nomination was notable because she was only the fifth woman—next to Missy Elliott, Eve, Nicki Minaj, and Lauryn Hill—to ever receive the honor for rap album. Then again, Azalea isn't exactly a figure the rap community has come to embrace.

Her nomination left many critics feeling torn between wanting to root for the rare female rap nominee but wishing it had been anyone but Azalea, a white rapper who has repeatedly been accused of racial appropriation and doesn't seem to acknowledge the history of the predominantly-black genre. (As Kara Brown of Jezebel pointed out, Azalea riffed on a Kendrick Lamar lyric by calling herself a "slavemaster" in one of her earliear songs.) Unlike Eminem, who has always acknowledged his white-ness in songs like "G.O.A.T." and "White America," Azalea has yet to show any self-awareness about her race and the race she's been accused of co-opting. 

In response to her nomination for rap album, Complex magazine crunched the numbers and examined how the Grammys have typically snubbed rap's most prolific players, or mis-represented the genre altogether.  Last year, for example, white rapper Macklemore won three of the four rap Grammys, which means the Seattle, Wash. native been awarded more Grammys than rap pioneers like Tupac, Biggie, Nas, DMX, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Mos-Def, Run DMC, Public Enemy, Ja Rule, and Kendrick Lamar combined.  

Stretching back to the inaugural Grammy awards in 1959, 380 out of the 795 nominations were awarded to white male artists, according to a 2011 study by the L.A. Times. Twenty-one percent of nominations went to white females, which is still slightly more than the total nominations—19 percent—for all black nominees, regardless of gender.

Judging by those statistics, Azalea as a white woman had a better chance of being nominated for best rap album of the year than her black male counterparts. And Eminem, whose rap album win for The Marshall Mathers LP2 marked his record sixth win in the category, had an even greater chance of being nominated. 

When Macklemore took home the Grammy for best rap album last year, he felt so much guilt that he texted fellow nominee, Compton-Calif.-grown wordsmith Lamar, to apologize for what he saw as an embarrassing snub on behalf of the Grammys. "You got robbed," Macklemore wrote in a text to Lamar. "It's weird and it sucks that I robbed you. I was gonna say that during the speech. Then the music started playing during my speech and I froze." 

With lyrics like "It's easy just to consider me one of the greatest white rappers there is knowing g--damn well that I'm one of the best mother------- rappers who ever lived period," Eminem isn't likely to issue any apologies for his win Sunday night. But because he's always been forthcoming about race relations in America, unlike Azalea, nobody will expect him to.  

Original article from

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