If you’ve read a take on the upcoming 67th Grammy Awards, happening this weekend, it may have been something about what a great year it’s been “for women.” And while for me that has a whiff of knuckleheaded condescension about it – every year is a “great year for women” if you’re paying attention – it’s true that it’s been a huge belated breakthrough year for three brash women in pop. Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter brought a fresh, modern jolt to the landscape, and though the three have been in the game for a minute, at ages 32, 26 and 25 respectively, they’re still getting started. Along with fellow nominees Gracie Abrams (25), Ariana Grande (31), and Grammy darling Billie Eilish (still only 23, she has nine Grammys and 32 nominations to her name) – whoever wins on Sunday, in the pop categories, it’s likely that youth will be served.

Over on the rap and rock side at the Grammys? Not so much. Two genres – and calling them “genres” is even ludicrous, as they are colossal cultural movements that together helped define the last century of popular music – are demographically and sonically stuck. Rap recently celebrated its 50-year anniversary, and rock — for argument’s sake measuring from the landmark “Rock Around the Clock” as a starting point — is approaching 73. And at the Grammy Awards, a whole lotta 50-and-up, overwhelmingly male, artists continue to dominate both fields. Recording Academy, when it comes to the hidebound, patriarchal worlds of rap and rock, we have a reverse-ageism problem.

Let’s start with rock, because no one else does anymore. And that’s the first foundational truth to its diminished position at the Grammys. Rock is a 21st century red headed stepchild who has only decreased in relevance to pop culture at large as the millennium has marched on. In the US – an important distinction as things feel differently in the UK – since the pop punk heyday of the early 2000s, there has been no significant rock presence in mainstream pop culture, save for artists who began their careers before the turn of the millennium and are continuing on. Hip-hop, dance pop, EDM, R&B, even hyperpop and a recent resurgence in country sounds have all eclipsed rock.

The major exception is broadly, indie rock, which year in, year out continues to turn out young and successful new acts in various subsets of rock. But at the Grammys? Indie rock, alt rock, folk rock, baroque, chamber, shoegaze, emo, and frankly nearly anything performed by a woman or artists under 30 is shunted off into the Academy’s two “alternative” categories: Best Alternative Music Album and Best Alternative Music Performance. Those categories are where we’ve seen nominations and wins over the past 10 years by fresh new names: Wet Leg, Big Thief, Arlo Parks, Japanese Breakfast, and last year’s winner for Alt Album, boygenius.

But it’s the very existence of those “alternative” awards, along with one metal category, that effectively clears the decks for that which the Grammys deem just “rock”: mainstream, traditional, loud guitars, almost exclusively male, and largely household names with decades of releases under their belts. Trad and dad: In the Academy’s estimation, that formula, for all intents and purposes, is “rock.”

Nowhere does Grammy rock’s ossified reverse ageism come into more stark relief than in Category 17, Best Rock Album, officially described as a record containing “greater than 75% playing time of new rock, hard rock, or metal recordings.” This year, it includes only two artists who’ve been around for less than 20 years: Brighton’s IDLES, releasing since 2017, and Dublin’s Fontaines D.C., whose debut dropped only six years ago. The rest of the field? Have a look for yourself, you may be familiar with them:

Best Rock Album

Happiness Bastards — The Black Crowes
Romance — Fontaines D.C.
Saviors — Green Day
TANGK — IDLES
Dark Matter — Pearl Jam
Hackney Diamonds — The Rolling Stones
No Name — Jack White

Were I a voter, this would be a no-brainer. Fontaines D.C.’s glimmering, glorious Romance was my favorite LP of 2024 in any genre, and as far as I’m concerned it deserves any flowers it gets and then some. But that’s beside the point, which is that this lineup looks as though Fontaines and IDLES somehow managed to crash a classic rock party whose members range in age from 49-year-old Jack White to the indestructible Mick ‘n’ Keef at 81. In fact, the Rolling Stones were the first to win this award, for Voodoo Lounge in 1995. (Why the Academy didn’t introduce a Rock Album award until ’95 – another Grammy mystery.) And every nominee in this category – including IDLES and Fontaines D.C. – have been Grammy nominated before, including Green Day, a whopping 19 times (four wins) and Pearl Jam, with 14 nominations and one victory.

The one usual suspect missing is Foo Fighters, but only because they didn’t release a new album. The Foos have been nominated for Best Rock Album a record eight times and won five – out of 15 Grammy wins overall. Which speaks to a chronic, year-in-year-out pattern at the Grammys: continually nominating the same artist over and over and over, with seemingly little regard for the project, as if by rote. It happens across many genres — if you don’t believe me, look up the Grammy histories of Death Cab For Cutie, the Chemical Brothers, or Beck. And it’s not to say any of those artists or their releases weren’t deserving of those nominations in successive years, but rather that it feels lazy on the part of the Academy, suggesting a voting body that is either unaware or incurious about what else might be out there.

Consider that voting body for a moment. When it comes to deciding what artist or recording goes in what category, the Recording Academy maintains “screening committees.” From the website: “The purpose of genre screening committees is not to make artistic or technical judgments about the recordings, but rather to make sure that each entry is eligible and placed in its proper category… The screening committees, comprised of more than 300 experts across various musical genres, meet to ensure that recordings are placed in the proper Categories. From there, we arrive at the official First Round ballot.”

So, some or all of these 300 folks determine whether you’re “rock” or “alternative” or something else altogether. Then, when it comes to ballots, in both the first ballot and the final round of voting, members are “directed” to vote only in their field of expertise, “in up to 10 categories across up to three genre Fields plus the six categories of the General Field,” though I can’t find any indication that if one were to vote outside one’s proscribed area that there is any sort of price to be paid. As for familiarity with what they are voting on? Like most awards, there is no mechanism to ensure that voters have heard everything they are voting on, though streamers are provided by the Acedemy. I will only say that in the only awards I regularly vote on, the SAG Awards, if I have not seen every nominee in a category, I don’t vote in it. But that’s just me.

Finally on rock, since de facto reverse age discrimination is the issue, what about the age of those casting ballots? While the Grammys have purportedly made significant efforts in recent years to diversify and modernize its voting body, including bringing in younger members, they don’t divulge specific age-related data. But I’ve run two AI’s on the question of the average age of a Grammy voter and gotten back “between 45 and 50” and a very specific “53.” In any case, it ain’t 30. And I’m guessing in rock, it skews even older. Which of course is not to say a 50-something voter isn’t just as tapped in to new music as they were at 25 — I like to think I fit the bill — but when your Best Rock Album category is nearly monopolized by nominees who are these voters’ middle-aged peers or even their elders? All while plenty of vital rock music is being made by younger artists, but not receiving its due? Something needs fixing.

As for rap, the Grammys’ reverse ageism is to me, frankly, more egregious. Because while it may not be as dominated by greybeards as rock, it feels more jealously, willfully gatekept, precisely because there are so many young artists today making hip-hop that millions of monthly listeners, myself included, find engaging, innovative, riotous and fun – but which is hard to imagine ever getting a sniff at a Grammy nod because of its divergence from What Came Before. It wasn’t always this way.

Rap’s complicated relationship with the awards goes way back to when “Music’s Biggest Night” first (and finally) recognized the art form in 1989, with one award, for Best Rap Performance. The categories have morphed over time, split into Solo and Duo/Group performances, then not, split again into Male and Female, then not, adding a Rap/Sung Collaboration, which became Melodic Rap Performance, before settling on the four categories there are today. And the controversies have been myriad: too much pop-rap in the beginning (“Men in Black” beating out “Hypnotize,” anyone?); a chronic exclusion of women; and most famously, the outrageous lack of recognition of hip-hop in the Grammys’ “Big Four” general field categories: It’s now been an embarrassing 21 years and counting since rap took Album Of The Year.

But being too young was rarely an issue. Nas was 24 when he landed his first nod; LL Cool J, 25; Will Smith, 21; and Tupac, 25, in the same year he died. This year? Across four rap categories, the average age of nominees is…41. There are exactly four nominees in their 20s, the same number as there are in their 50s, and zero under 25, which is part of the point. Thanks to the great democratization born of recording software in the 21st century, more music – specifically hip-hop – is being made by teenagers and early 20-somethings. If the age of the young DIY beatmaker and bedroom rapper has led to a firehose of mid-or-worse music, it’s also opened previously closed doors for inspiring, refreshingly innovative young rule-breakers, who have taken off, at least by streaming standards. And yet the cloud, emo, mumble, rage, post-rage, PluggnB and more that’s so resonated with a huge cohort of young fans has struggled to get a glance from the Grammys. The drawbridge feels like it’s been pulled up by those dogged old heads who stand pat on records needing to meet certain bars of musicality (and most certainly, lyricism) to qualify as “real rap” in the way the old rock guard speak of “real rock.” If there can be “rockists” surely there are (with a strategically placed hyphen) “rap-ists?”

The list of essential, boldly entertaining hip-hop artists of the past 15 years who have never gotten a single Grammy nomination could make for a hell of a music festival lineup, and in fact reads not unlike a Rolling Loud poster: Ski Mask The Slump God, Kodak Black, Sexyy Red, NLE Choppa, JPEGMAFIA, Ken Carson, Denzel Curry, MIKE, Robb Banks, BabyTron, Key Glock, Yung Lean, Lil Tecca and many more. Seminal drill icon Chief Keef? Zero nominations. Overlord of the Gen-Z underground, Playboi Carti? A mere two nominations, both for features, including this year, on “Carnival,” from Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s project ¥$. The button- and genre-pusher Lil Uzi Vert? Four nominations, no wins. The adored and recently emancipated Young Thug has six nominations and only one win. Superstar A$AP Rocky has had three Grammy nods, two for music videos, but hasn’t won, while his peer Travis Scott also is winless, despite 10 nominations. Another next-gen hero, Future, has arguably gotten his due, with 15 nominations and three wins, including four nods this year for his collaboration with Metro Boomin. And one of the most heartening Grammy rap moves has been the love shown since 2013 to class-of-his-own futurist Tyler, The Creator, with five nominations and two wins.

Surely Tyler would be in the running this year for Best Rap Album with his widely acclaimed Chromokopia, as would Grammy favorite Kendrick Lamar with GNX, but both albums were released after the 2024 cutoff. Lamar’s beef-fueled megahit “Not Like Us” is, however, nominated for Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and will likely win both and add to his 17 Grammys to date – a huge tally that also tells you what you need to know about what is valued in Grammy rap. So what is up for Best Rap Album this year? A lot of dads, and one twentysomething woman.

Best Rap Album

Might Delete Later — J. Cole
The Auditorium, Vol. 1 — Common & Pete Rock
Alligator Bites Never Heal — Doechii
The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce) — Eminem
We Don’t Trust You — Future & Metro Boomin

If I were voting among these, I would go for either Future & Metro Boomin or Doechii, and who knows, maybe the breakout Swamp Princess can steal it from the dudes. But I also wouldn’t be surprised to see vets Common and Pete Rock take the prize, given Academy voters’ preference for the traditional. And certainly never count out Eminem, who has won this award more than anyone else – six times! – a stat that alone says something. Who would I have in the running if I ran the circus? Yeat. A 24-year-old legitimate underground-to-overground star who has now landed four top 10 albums, two in 2024 alone, including one in the period of eligibility, 2093. You want to tell me the reception to it was “meh”? I’ll see your meh, and raise you the critical shellacking that The Death Of Slim Shady got. But of course, he’s Slim Shady.

Elsewhere, I can see a serious case that breakout star Cash Cobain deserves a nod in Best New Artist, and given his musicality, it could well happen, but on Grammy time, where “new” is pliable, in say, two years. Likewise London’s Central Cee, who with a well received new LP out should be in the conversation next year. I am honestly shocked that Travis Scott and Playboi Carti’s inescapable, hypnotic rager “FEIN” isn’t in the Rap Performance category. While at the other end of the spectrum, I would love to have seen NLE Choppa’s raunchy dance-rap crowdpleaser “Slut Me Out 2” get a nod – if only to hear that title uttered from a Grammy stage.

But many of the aforementioned don’t hew closely enough to familiar trad rap, and I suspect there’s the rub. I remember when hip-hop celebrated disruption and iconoclasm. The disruptors are still out there, arguably more than ever, but either Academy voters aren’t aware of them (a distinct possibility) or aren’t particularly interested in disruption if that means deviating from a draconian notion of what rap “ought” to sound and look like. The implicit message is: Fall in line sonically, for the love of God learn to freestyle, or at the very least do a collab with an R&B or pop star if you want a chance at vying for that sweet Grammy gold.

Too many rappers gone way too soon didn’t make it long enough to ever see if their names would be called. I have to think it would have happened eventually for Pop Smoke, whose signature anthem “Dior” did earn a posthumous nod in 2021. I’d be less bullish on the Academy ever embracing the ferocious and feral late XXXTentacion, who’s become in death an even greater hero to the disaffected edge of young rap fans than he was in life. Hard to say with the equally beloved emo avatar Juice WRLD, who managed to both master melodic, heart-on-the-sleeve Auto-Tuned angst and a be wordsmith who could more than hold his own freestyling off the dome.

But X and Juice were as much punk and emo rockers as they were rappers. They weren’t winning over too many old heads while they were alive, nor were they trying to. It comes down to how expansive one’s concept of rap is – and the Grammys’ flat-out isn’t. Juice himself, deft lyricist that he was, told Complex in 2019, “Stuff is just changing, that’s all. We’re moving into a new era of music. I feel like it’s not necessarily a good thing to forget where shit started, but shit is changing.” Yeah, Juice. Shit was changing, and that was nearly six years ago. Someone forgot to tell that to the gatekeepers deciding rap nominations at the Grammy Awards.

None of this, on the rock or rap side, is a call for the exclusion of anyone, but simply for more inclusive, progressive understandings of rap and rock to make room at the Grammys for more of the genuinely exciting music being made by artists who have only been in the game for a short while, and just maybe communicating that you shouldn’t have to be well on your way to AARP qualification to land a Grammy nod. And to return to the original point: In pop music, you don’t!

The traditionalist men (I’m gonna take a wild guess that it’s largely men) who are keeping young and vibrant rap and rock artists away from the Grammys, either through ignorance or some misguided idea that they are preserving a sort of musical purity, are doing their genres no favors. You may respond, “No duh, the Grammys have never been known for progressive thinking.” Maybe, but I don’t buy into anything being an immutable “given” that can never change.

I dunno. Maybe some people like music to have rules. Not me.