Grammys: Coco Jones upset SZA and avoided a shutout, but how?

Jaime Rodriguez
·4 min read
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One of the biggest shockers at the most recent Grammy Awards was that SZA’s number-one hit “Kill Bill” lost all of its awards. It wasn’t widely predicted to win in the general field, so it made sense that the song ended up losing Record of the Year and Song of the Year. However, an award many thought SZA had in the bag was Best R&B Performance, with “Kill Bill” being far and away the biggest crossover hit among the nominees; in fact, it was the only top-40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. Coco Jones ended up winning, though, with her R&B smash “ICU.” So how exactly did that happen?

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R&B Grammy voters are quite unpredictable, but if I were to glean something from their voting patterns, it’s their love for traditional R&B. If you look at the winners for Best R&B Performance, most of them lean to the traditional as opposed to the urban side of the genre. Consider winners like Bruno Mars’s “That’s What I Like,” Anderson .Paak’s “Come Home” and Muni Long’s “Hrs and Hrs,” among others. The instances where it doesn’t skew traditional seem to mostly be wins for Beyoncé (“Black Parade” in 2021 and “Drunk In Love” in 2014), but those were undeniable wins in their lineups, not to mention Beyoncé is an absolute field juggernaut in general. The other instance would be Usher’s “Climax,” which isn’t really urban-leaning but I wouldn’t call it traditional either. That said, that song’s direct competition (Miguel’s “Adorn,” which won Best R&B Song) was just as modern, and Usher is a field favorite like Beyoncé.

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Given that tendency, you might think the more traditional R&B songs were the frontrunners, but you’d be wrong. In 2020 “Come Home” was predicted to lose the award to H.E.R. and Bryson Tiller’s “Could’ve Been,” which was far and away the bigger hit, and also benefitted from newly-minted Grammy darling H.E.R., who won two R&B awards the year prior. Similarly, in 2017, Solange’s “Cranes in the Sky” won the category in an upset against Rihanna’s “Needed Me.” Not only was “Needed Me” the biggest hit nominated, Rihanna also had a way better track record than Solange at the Grammys (to date “Cranes” is her only nomination and win). And Rihanna had a huge year, earning eight noms total.

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“ICU” vs. “Kill Bill” followed a similar pattern. Jones’s track was an old-school R&B ballad, while “Kill Bill” was more modern. “ICU” also had another advantage: airplay. A lot of “Kill Bill’s” radio exposure came from pop stations. However, just based on R&B radio, “ICU” was actually the bigger hit. The track topped the Mainstream R&B Airplay chart for four weeks, while reaching number-two on both R&B Airplay and Adult R&B Airplay. Meanwhile, “Kill Bill” peaked one spot behind on every one of those formats. And as we saw with “Needed Me,” a song’s pop radio performance is not as relevant to R&B voters. Coco Jones also had a lot of love in the Grammy nominations, earning an impressive five bids, including everywhere in the R&B field. So considering SZA was pretty much locked for Best Progressive R&B Album at the very least, this was probably the best place to throw Jones a win.

“ICU” winning was a nice surprise. It earned Jones a well-deserved Grammy after years in the industry. And it was amazing to see different Black women sweep the R&B field: Jones (R&B Performance), SZA (R&B Song and Progressive R&B Album), Victoria Monét (R&B Album) and Susan Carol (Traditional R&B Performance with PJ Morton). It also let Jones escape the Jazmine Sullivan/SZA/India.Arie trend of R&B Best New Artist contenders losing everything despite a big nominations haul. And considering SZA won three awards that night anyway, I doubt she’s pressed about it.

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