It Took a Quarter of a Century for a Black Woman to Win a Grammy for Album of the Year: How We Got Here
It took a quarter of a century for a Black woman to win a Grammy for Album of the Year. While Cowboy Carter may be a personal win for Beyoncé, the win speaks to something greater: institutional narratives around Black women in music. From being regulated to R&B categories, overlooked because their identity is too far removed from traditional ideas on what music is, Black women’s shut-out from the highest honor in the music industry was an understood statement on who got to belong. Cowboy Carter’s win is a monumental milestone for Black women in the music industry, entertainment industry and media. This road was paved after 255 years, so how did we get here? Why did it take so long?
The 1999 Grammys marked a pivotal moment in Grammy history. Female artists were the spotlight of the awards, a first where women were either all or a majority of the big four general field categories. The woman with the most nominations–Lauryn Hill. It was her first Grammys as a solo artist. She’d won her first two Grammy awards as a member of The Fugees in 1997. The group had platformed Hill’s success. Her soulful alto vocals on “Killing Me Softly” made her music’s newest darling. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, released in August 1998, shifted culture. But, a 23-year-old Hill and the music industry had yet to know how timeless and resonant her album would become. The versatility of her melodic singing and smooth rap flow shaped Hill as a unique artist of the 1990s. Hill’s debut album would unequivocally become one of the greatest albums of all time; it’s an album rooted in Blackness by addressing issues in the Black community and converging multiple styles of Black music, such as hip-hop, R&B and neo-soul. F.D. Signifier commented, “Lauryn was doing what she could to change the trajectory of Black people.”
On the night of the 1999 Grammys, Hill won four Grammys before performing “To Zion” with Carlos Santana. As Rosie O’Donnell introduced Hill’s performance, the room erupted into cheers, showcasing the industry’s excitement for the success of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill on Grammy night. Before Hill, only two other Black women had won Album of the Year: Natalie Cole and Whitney Houston, most recently in 1994. When it became time to announce the album of the year winners, Houston co-presented. Upon seeing the winner, Houston erupted into celebration. A smiley Hill walked up to the stage. She’d just won Album of the Year, the first time a hip-hop album would win the category. And most notably, she’d become the last Black woman to ever win a Grammy for Album of the Year for decades.
SOS by SZA was a critical and commercial success. After a five-year break, SZA’s sophomore album was widely well received by the public. Two of the album’s singles “Kill Bill” and “Snooze” peaked at number one and two, respectively on the Billboard Hot 100. Utilizing innovative and versatile production techniques within the progressive R&B genre from Carter Lang and Rob Bisel, and Jay Versace, SOS broke records for mainstream and R&B success, including being the first woman to have a number one album for 10 weeks in the 2020s. Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and NPR were among the publications to name SOS the number one album of 2023. Alongside an expansive tour, 2023 was one of the biggest years of SZA’s career. She'd achieved everything someone needed to be considered an Album of the Year winner. Going into the 2024 Grammys, SZA was poised to become the first Black woman to win a Grammy for album of the year since Hill. But, SZA lost.
Online, the outrage was instant. Collectively, Twitter regurgitated every reason why SZA should have won and every reason why the Recording Academy wouldn’t have awarded her. Simultaneously, SZA’s loss was a terrible whiplash and dizzying deja vu. One year prior, the same thing had happened to Beyoncé’s Renaissance: Act I, facilitating a sense of whiplash. A Black woman at her career high, well-respected by her peers and lauded by music critics had once again lost the highest honor of the music industry. This storyline just seemed to keep repeating.
For the first quarter of the 21st century, a Black woman didn't win a Grammy for Album of the Year. Somehow in that timeline, Black women were excluded from participating in that pinnacle of success that makes an artist’s legacy undeniable. You don’t need a Grammy to have a legacy. Blonde by Frank Ocean is a generation-defining body of work that Ocean chose to have excluded from Grammy consideration, recognizing that his art is more than the Recording Academy. But, not everyone is Frank Ocean. For Black women, the highest recognition in our industries is more often than not the means for respect and acknowledgement that there is a space carved for us. Recognition is social mobility, it’s having an impenetrable spot in the social hierarchy. For the Recording Academy to refuse Black women the highest honor of the music industry is to say “you are not considered, you are not regarded.”
Think of the music industry as a company, the Recording Academy being its name and the Grammys as the annual company awards. Now, picture each genre as a department in the company, the Grammy’s genre categories as department awards. The Grammy’s general field categories then become the space for any outstanding employee, regardless of department association, to be recognized for the exceptional work they’ve done for the company over the year, and Album of the Year, the highest award for achievement possible. Now, imagine if for 25 years not one single Black woman in the entirety of the company ever got the award for the highest award despite doing everything managers and supervisors said they needed to do to win that award. And, somehow after doing all of that and more, and being recommended by everyone, they still lost. Some may consider that a problem, something that needs an internal review on equity problems. But, for the Recording Academy, that accountability doesn’t seem to happen, leading to the continued cycle of Black women losing to peers, who also recognize that they shouldn’t have won.
So why is Cowboy Carter the first time a Black woman has won Album of the Year at the Grammys since 1999? There are a variety of factors–though they don’t excuse the snubs–that played a role in Black women not winning Album of the Year. According to data collected by ModPop, from 1999 to 2024, there were 16 times Black women were up for Album of the Year at the Grammys, including 2000, the year after Hill won. TLC, India.Arie, Missy Elliot, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Brittany Howard, Janelle Monae, Lizzo, Jhene Aiko, Mary J. Blige, H.E.R., Doja Cat and SZA. For many of these acts, their nominations represented albums that were cultural phenomena such as Fanmail, The Diary of Alicia Keys, The Emancipation of Mimi, Lemonade and SOS. This is a familiar argument often made when notable albums lose Album of the Year. Cultural impact is a crucial component of evaluating an Album of the Year. Due to the proliferation of fan culture in the digital age, commercial success such as Billboard performances, copies sold and music streams are utilized as the highest tool for determining an Album of the Year. An album’s ability to shape culture, influence societal conversations and facilitate new ideas about how to approach music are part of the cultural impact that assure’s an album place in the zeitgeist and generational legacy. Alongside cultural impact, critical success–meaning performance among verified music critics–also accounts for how an Album of the Year nominee is perceived. Critics can shape how listeners think about an album or direct them to what music is worth listening to. Music critics don’t have the final say. But, professional critics and music journalists, who’ve had extensive experience, bring a background of knowledge about music that is respected in music culture.
However, the Recording Academy–like fanbases–seem to willingly overlook cultural impact in favor of commercial and economic impact. Such willful oversights can normalize popularity over the critical. Popular music can be impactful, but not all impactful music is popular. ModPop discusses how sometimes artists win because of “their economic impact rather than cultural and artistic impact.” This shows how the academy founded on recognizing musical achievement may not actually be interested in the music. Instead, the music that makes money is the one looked upon more favorably. This becomes one of the ways that music is not evaluated on its stand-alone merit, but other factors unrelated to music become a determinant in an album’s win. Other factors have included the Recording Academy’s tendency to award their darlings or legacy acts, examples include Adele’s 25 up against Lemonade, and The Diary of Alicia Keys up against Ray Charles' post-humouthous album.
Outside of not prioritizing cultural impact, some Black female artists have faced pigeonholing–something Beyoncé highlighted in the making of Cowboy Carter and in the album itself. Black women’s wins tend to be regulated to genre categories such as R&B and the now-renamed urban categories. Carey could arguably be considered a pop artist, but her music often gets regulated to R&B categories at the Grammys. Tyler, the Creator called this out in 2019 after winning a Grammy for Best Rap Album. He commented, “It sucks that whenever we—and I mean guys that look like me—do anything that’s genre-bending or that’s anything they always put it in a rap or urban category. I don’t like that ‘urban’ word—it’s just a politically correct way to say the n-word to me,” adding, “when I hear that, I’m just like why can’t we be in pop?” This pigeonholing also sets up genre bias since Black-related categories like R&B and hip-hop are the least likely to perform well in the general categories. “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar became the second song hip-hop song to ever win Song and Record of the Year, only two hip-hop albums have won Album of the Year and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is the last time an R&B album won Album of the Year (also considered one of the two hip-hop albums to win Album of the Year). There’s clear genre bias that poses an obstacle to Black women.
Black women’s work may not represent the Recording Academy’s values surrounding music. As a body, the Recording Academy seems to prefer work that upholds traditional ideas on music. Ann Powers writes, “throughout popular music, it also takes the form of pervasive ideas. These include the notion that music made with ‘real’ instruments and sung straightforwardly, like Adele's softly tinged soul or Sturgill Simpson's raucous country, require more skill and vision than those created within the synth and sample-driven vernacular of hip-hop; the assumption that artists who stand still and sing, like Adele, are more ‘authentic’ than those who dance, like Beyoncé.” Powers asserts that contemporary work that engages with progressive elements of what music can be are more likely to be overlooked, and how ideas surrounding “traditional” music values are coded as white. Since genre-bias already exists as a barrier for recognition, anything done to shift music far from its familiarity can be constructed as inauthentic. This is extremely limiting for creativity and keeps music stagnant rather than engaging with futuristic ideas that can expand the horizons of music. And to evade genre-bias would mean to engage with musical elements that could codify one's work as closer to whiteness rather than existing in a place of genuine artistic expression.
The room erupted into cheers when Cowboy Carter won Album of the Year. Maybe many of those cheers were for Beyoncé herself, but the obstacles that women have faced to winning Album of the Year became a widespread topic in recent years among music critics. Leading up to the 2025 Grammys, The New York Times published an article in their music section acknowledging the shut out of Black women from the category. This silent struggle was leaving the discussion circles amidst Black women and entering the mainstream. In the room when Beyoncé won, past Black women who’d also been nominated for Album of Year: Alicia Keys, Janelle Monae, and SZA, all together to witness the history-making moment their nominations paved the way for.
Cowboy Carter is an album that inserts Black people in the music history stolen from them and challenges a Black artist’s space in genre. It’s the album that actively sought to upend music that would upend a record that had denied Black women their right recognition in the music industry. Though Beyoncé is only the fourth woman to win Album of the Year, her win could mean a new path forward. A path that allows Black women to show up creatively without penalty. A path that says budding Black female artists won’t have to go through as many obstacles to create the music they’re passionate about, that’s a generational legacy.