Grammy Award for Album of the Year

race/social status and to help fostering music business along the years. According to Mark Nero, a professional journalist and music critic, the category “neo-soul” has been around in the late-1990s, essentially describing soul music with hip-hop elements. Artists that represents the genre are Raphael Saadiq and D’ Angelo.…

Pimp a Butterfly: Setting the Standard for the Contemporary Rap Album On March 16, 2015, Kendrick Lamar released one of the most critically-acclaimed rap albums of all time. To Pimp a Butterfly sold 324,000 copies its first week, giving Lamar his first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and receiving platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (Lynch 2015). To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar’s second studio album, uses components of funk, soul, and jazz to reflect on his…

Queen Latifah made history when she won a Grammy for her groundbreaking hit, “U.N.I.T.Y” in 1995. The song spoke out against domestic violence and the objectification of black female sexuality. “U.N.I.T.Y” began a conversation in the African American community over violence and assault against women. Latifay’s Grammy Award winning in 1995 gives black women a voice in a field that is dominated by men. What is interesting in her music…

a wide vocal range. His music had a wide variety of styles, including rock, funk, soul, R&B, and pop. He has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artist of all time. He has won seven Grammy awards, a Golden Globe award and an Academy award for the film Purple Rain. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. A few weeks before, Prince had cancelled a show because he was getting a cold, and after a show one week later he had been…

accepted a permanent position as a drummer in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Grohl declined and entered Robert Lang Studios in October 1994. For their first album (Foo Fighters), Dave Grohl wrote every song, played every instrument and sang every vocal with the exception of a guitar part played by Greg Dulli of the Afghan Wings. After the album created interest among record labels, Grohl formed a band to support it. The Foo Fighters made their live public debut on February 23rd, 1995 and then…

anything but positive with the album receiving a 7.6, an all time low, from industry leading reviewer Pitchfork. The album was like nothing ever seen before, featuring prominent use of the Roland TR-808 drum machine with stacked synthesizer samples to accent its heavy Auto-Tune nature. Traditionally used as a pitch correction software for instruments and vocals, 808s and Heartbreak utilizes Auto-Tune as a method of conveying feelings too raw to be spoken explicitly. In this album West challenges…

Dylan helped him draw the attention of John Hammond, an A&R man with Columbia Records. Dylan signed with Columbia and produced his first album, Bob Dylan, in 1962 (Bob Dylan Biography). After releasing a few more albums, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and The Times Are a-Changin’, Bob Dylan would become a recognized figure in the 60’s protest movement. He entered a two-year long relationship with Joan Beaz, a famous icon of the movement. She would introduce him to thousands of her fans at concerts,…

Johann Strauss, Jr. and The Eagles are both iconic figures of music in their own rights. One a master of light, fun dance music, like polkas and waltzes, and the other a talented rock band that defined a Californian generation. On the surface, “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” and “Hotel California” couldn’t seem more different. Each song was researched, listened to multiple times, and broken down into segments to analyze and after some investigation, it’s obvious that there are some…

don’t become a hero just because of what you do, but from who you are. The extraordinary woman, Maya Angelou is a woman of many wise words and achievements. The phenomenal woman, that’s Mrs. Angelou, her achievements vary from her literary skills/awards, her commitment to making this world a better place and her bravery to speak out to be heard (Maya Angelou). She was best known for her book “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, which made literary history as the first nonfiction best-seller of an…

very young age. At just 16 years old her talents were already being discovered when a classmate of hers passed on a demo (Rolling Stone, 1). She grew up surrounded by Jazz music, in fact many of her relatives on her mother's side were Jazz musicians (Biography.com, Amy Winehouse). James Taylor and Sarah Vaughn were huge influences for Winehouse and helped to shape her music style (Biography.com, Amy Winehouse). During her career she won five Grammy Awards for her 2006 album Back to Black…