Chance The Rapper’s new mixtape Coloring Book has been drawing uniformly rave reviews for its mixture of joyful verses and gospel-influenced sounds. But while Coloring Book is an early contender for all sorts of “Best Of The Year” awards, there’s one celebration it’s already been ruled out of joining—the Grammy Awards. That’s because Chance isn’t selling the album, only streaming it online through Apple Music. But the Grammys’ rules say that any music in contention “must be commercially released in general distribution in the United States,” an arbitrary-seeming distinction that’s clearly been bothering Chance for a while now, given his line on Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” about how “I hear you gotta sell it to snatch the Grammy.” He also previously backed a petition to have the Grammy rules be reconsidered on Twitter:
On the one hand, it’s not like the Grammys have ever been a hotbed of forward thinking or progressiveness, and the lack of an award won’t hurt Coloring Book’s non-existent sales. On the other, though, there’s probably a problem when one of the hottest albums of the year is automatically knocked out of consideration for one of music’s most prominent awards. We’ll just have to wait and see whether the 30,000 or so signatures on the petition to get the ruling changed will be able to have much of a say on the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ stance.