The Legacy of Segregating BIPOC Creators from the General Categories
Andrea Chiang (they/them) // Contributor
Lily Jones (she/her) // Contributing Visuals
In June 2026, the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS), commonly known as the Recording Academy, announced several new categories for their 69th annual Grammy awards ceremony honouring excellence in the music industry. To receive the prestigious golden gramophone is one of the highest honours a music creator and professional can achieve in the United States.
It’s why it came as a shock to many when a month later the globally-renowned South Korean K-Pop boy group, BTS, released on their individual Instagram accounts an identical statement that translates to:
“We have decided not to enter the Grammys this year.”
BTS’s boycott is a response to the 2027 Grammy Awards’ new category: Best Asian Pop Music Performance, and has reignited a debate about representation in the half-century-old awards show.
Best Asian Pop Music Performance
The Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. says the intent behind creating Best Asian Pop Music Performance category is to provide “‘more opportunities to celebrate different and new genres of music.’” This is contradicted by the fact that the new category uses a regional label, “Asian,” rather than a genre label like K-Pop. It lumps all K-Pop, J-Pop, Mandopop, Cantopop and any other pop music from Asia into one broad Asian category, which opens up a Pandora’s box of questions:
Can any of the 48 countries classified as Asia under the United Nations submit their pop music into that category, including Russia and Saudi Arabia? Will we see other genre categories in the future expand to include regional categories? Why haven’t we seen award categories such as North American Pop or European Classical?
Contrary to the CEO’s intent to “‘represent more music creators, artists, writers, and producers’” the rule to include “meaningful use of one or more Asian languages” makes it difficult for many Asian artists to participate. This requirement disqualifies any major English-language releases from Asian artists, like BTS and Blackpink, who have plenty of songs recorded entirely in English for the Western market. Any Asian artists from the West won’t be eligible in the category unless their song is in an Asian language.
Miist, a Chinese American recording artist, is optimistic and hopes that this award “becomes a doorway rather than a destination.” But the precedent the Grammys have set with the Latinx and Black community proves otherwise.
Best Grammy Snubs
The Grammy Big Four—Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist—are the oldest, most coveted award categories and open to all music genres. Despite Hispanic-Americans making up the second-largest racial group in the U.S., Latin artists have rarely won, much less been nominated, for non-Latin categories. Only three Latin artists have ever won Album of the Year and no Latin artist has ever won Song of the Year since the Grammy’s inception in 1959.
Unfortunately, winning one of the Big Four Grammys isn’t measured purely by skill and talent.
Beyoncé, a Black female artist, has a total of 99 Grammy nominations and 35 Grammy wins. She has the most total Grammy wins of any artist in the history of the Grammys, and yet has only ever received two Big Four Grammys. Meanwhile Adele, a white female artist with 25 Grammy nominations and 16 Grammy wins has received almost all of the Big Four Grammys twice. More than half of Adele’s Grammy wins were from the Big Four Grammy categories.
Best Representation
Although the Recording Academy’s CEO argues that these categories don’t prevent BIPOC artists from qualifying for other categories, it sends the message that they do not belong in the mainstream.
Bad Bunny’s Grammy win in 2026 was notable because DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS was the “first predominantly Spanish-language release to win album of the year” in the entire 69-year-run of the Grammys, according to a LA Times article. Considering that the U.S. has the most Spanish-speakers in any non-Hispanic country in the entire world, the rarity of such an achievement is jaw-dropping. It’s almost as if Latin artists are expected to stay in the Latin Grammy Awards.
Beyoncé receiving the Best Country Album award in 2025 was just as notable because she was the first Black female artist to win. Beyoncé’s win was applauded by many Black country artists, but was not well-received by the Country Music Association (CMA). Shortly after, the Grammys announced that the Best Country Album award will be split into two new categories: Best Traditional Country Album and Best Contemporary Country Album. The music genre has always been seen as white, despite Black people’s significant contributions to country music’s roots. The new category seems to be a way to appease the white country artists who were unhappy with the result.
Many of these artists are treated like outsiders, but they have always been a part of the mainstream culture in the West.
BTS has been performing sold-out concerts. In their most recent world tour, they broke records for the most shows performed and the most attendees at the SoFi stadium in California, a total of eight shows and approximately 496,000 visitors. Members of the idol group are ambassadors for high couture brands such as Dior and Louis Vuitton, and continue to collaborate with globally-recognizable American brands like Coca-Cola, Calvin Klein and Champion.
BTS’s boycott is more than a refusal to be boxed in, but a demand to be respected the same as any other white artist competing for the general categories.
Representation isn’t a simple, single solution to years of systemic racism that continues to exclude marginalized groups. You need more voices from different communities and to hear their feedback.
Straykids, a K-Pop boy group that’s been extremely popular in the U.S., has recently joined BTS in boycotting the Grammys after the Recording Academy chose to follow through with adding the Best Asian Pop Music Performance category. Tyler the Creator called out the Grammys’s racist “urban” categories consistently being awarded to Black artists. Daddy Yankee, Maluma and J Balvin have criticized the Latin Grammys for continuing to ignore urbano, reggaeton and Latin trap. These are genres that have historically been subjected to racist and classist associations of criminal activity.
Hopefully with time we’ll see change, like BTS, “I hope that music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language.”