Quebec’s music industry gave out its rap album award on Wednesday night. All five nominees were white, and the winner was Loud, for “Douze sur douze.”
Calamine, one of the nominees, said so publicly at the end of October, several days after the lineup came out, and called the total absence of Black artists in the category a problem for the industry. Aswell, another nominee, has also criticized the category. CBC Montreal, 98.5 FM and the hip hop press have all picked up the complaint.
The field for the Premier gala de l’ADISQ, announced Sept. 16, was Aswell for “Berger,” Calamine for “Rétrograde,” FouKi for “Still Kankan,” Kinji00 for “À la prochaine fois” and Loud for “Douze sur douze.” ADISQ, the association of Quebec’s recording industry, handed out the award at the first of its two galas, broadcast on Télé-Québec.
Rap is a genre where Black artists in Quebec have long been part of the story, and a rap category with no Black nominee tells those artists, and the fans who stream them, who the industry thinks it belongs to. That is the stake for Black Montreal, whose rappers were left out of the one award built for them.
The counterargument is fair to state: nominees are picked on the albums, and an award should not run on quotas. But a category like this one raises questions that only the industry can answer. Who sits on the juries? Which albums were submitted? Which labels have the money and the push to get an album entered and heard? ADISQ should publish those answers rather than ask artists to take the outcome on trust.
ADISQ’s main gala is Sunday, Nov. 8. Quebec’s Black artists will be watching who is on that stage.
Have your say