Grammys flashback: Frank Ocean was first winner of a category before snubbing the awards for good

Jaime Rodriguez
·5 min read
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One of the most acclaimed albums of the 2010s, Frank Ocean’s “Channel Orange” was innovative and fresh, but still classic-sounding, and it earned a whopping 92 score on Metacritic. The album was also a commercial success, debuting at number-two on the Billboard 200. So it’s not surprising that “Channel Orange” was a big Grammy player, receiving major nominations like Album of the Year and Record of the Year (for “Thinkin Bout You”).

Ocean’s biggest Grammy achievement may have been winning the first Best Urban Contemporary Album award, now renamed Best Progressive R&B Album. Albeit controversial, the category has given us some amazing winners like Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” and, most recently, Steve Lacy’s “Gemini Rights.” And when you look at Ocean’s history, the year he competed, and the state of R&B in the early 2010s, it makes total sense how “Channel Orange” truly was the perfect inaugural winner.

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Frank Ocean came into a rather transitional R&B scene. 2011 was a year where R&B didn’t have that much of a presence on the charts. If you look at the Year-End Hot 100, the vast majority of R&B that made it in was hip-hop-inflected: Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, and Busta Rhymes‘s “Look At Me Now” and Jeremih and 50 Cent’s “Down On Me,” for instance. When it wasn’t hip-hop-leaning, it was very poppy, like Beyoncé’s “Best I Never Had” and Chris Brown’s “Yeah 3x.”

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It was the slow rise of a new subgenre, one that many didn’t even know what to call yet. Yes, it had some hip-hop elements, but it was undeniably R&B, way more moody, and with a sweet balance between grittier topics and soothing synthesizers and vocals. Writing for SPIN, Barry Walters argued, “Something happened last year to R&B, something more radical than most of us realized. Thanks to Frank Ocean’s mixtape ‘Nostalgia, ULTRA’ (released at the beginning of 2011) [… and others], an R&B and electronic dance music hybrid emerged that was nominally underground yet far more popular than what could be documented by sales.”

Before the 2013 Grammys the R&B categories were in a transitional period as well. The award show featured an extensive number of R&B categories in 2011. But in 2012 the Grammys decided to reduce the number of categories overall, eliminating every gendered award while at it. However, for R&B it wasn’t only decided to merge the male, female, and duo/group categories into one, but also to get rid of Best Urban/Alternative Performance and Best Contemporary R&B Album. Those albums suddenly had to compete with traditional R&B albums. Producer and recording academy member Ivan Barrias and other high-brow R&B talent then successfully petitioned for a new category to recognize the more alternative, modern artists in the R&B world. And as such, Best Urban Contemporary Album was born.

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“Channel Orange” was perhaps the first major album ushering in the new sound that would be deemed urban contemporary music. Before the album release his hype was already quite strong as an innovator in R&B, especially due to his mixtape, ‘Nostalgia, ULTRA.’ Writing for The Awl, Jozen Cummings called Ocean and a budding The Weeknd the “poster children for what’s being called a new wave of R&B.” This wave might look small in hindsight if you only check the charts; Ocean’s biggest song as a lead artist didn’t even crack the top 30. But it was truly influential within the industry, pretty much creating the landscape for what contemporary R&B releases would sound like even to this day. The Grammys noticed: Ocean was nominated in six categories, including four for his own work and two as a featured artist on Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church In The Wild.”

But while Ocean’s nominations were a sign of progress, they also evidenced the phenomenon of Black artists being relegated to the “Black” categories like R&B and rap; indeed, the only awards Ocean won that year were in those genre fields. So many saw the Urban Contemporary category as just that: a category to appease Black artists making waves but not doing traditional music. It was also a double-edged sword, as it was for the music not considered “R&B enough” for purists.

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What is considered “progressive” R&B now is likely a bit different from when Ocean won. In today’s Grammy landscape, I’d argue “Channel Orange” would likely compete in Best R&B Album. But the album and Ocean’s impact in introducing a new wave of R&B to both mainstream and Grammy success is remarkable. In many ways, Ocean paved the way for artists like Khalid, SZA and (pre-boycott) The Weeknd to be recognized substantially and not relegated to one or two nominations.

It’s a shame Ocean never really got to truly enjoy the Grammys; the artist chose to not submit his music again, deeming the awards old-fashioned and out of touch. Perhaps that’s true, but artists like Ocean and albums like “Channel Orange” are exactly what the Grammys need to keep modernizing. Still, with how the Grammys continuously treat Black music when it comes to winning in the big leagues, can you blame him for not wanting to be involved?

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