The Recording Academy honored a variety of artists who died this past year during its in memoriam segment at the 2019 Grammy Awards. One person noticeably absent from the tribute was XXXTENTACION, and it apparently wasn’t an oversight.
According to a report by Variety, the Grammys rejected repeated requests from the late artist’s reps for his inclusion and purposefully left him out of the segment. The controversial rapper reportedly wasn’t featured due to his alleged acts of domestic violence.
X was clearly on the Recording Academy’s radar though. In December, Rolling Stone specifically asked Academy president Neil Portnow about X’s chances of being in the segment.
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“It’s always a daunting task to consider the talented young artists who died this year,” Portnow said. “We design the show after knowing the nominations, and that was today, so we will be deciding on the programming of that now. We don’t have pre-obits prepared like in journalism but we do leave time every year for an in memoriam and we will be planning that now. I don’t have an answer for you on XXX.”
Portnow said the Academy tracks all of the deaths in the music industry each year but can only feature about “10 to 15 percent” of the deceased in the show’s in memoriam segment. However, X was acknowledged in a list featured on the Grammy website.
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