Dear Misguided Bieber Stans (Stalkers + Fans),

This is coming from a former NARAS employee. You probably will say, “NARAS?”

Exactly.

That’s your first mistake and admission of ignorance. You likely don’t even know that the National Academy of the Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS) is the body responsible for the Grammy Awards.
The common response to the unprecedented win by jazz artist Esperanza Spalding (by Bieber Stans) is…

“Who?”

Exactly.

Mistake #2.

When you’re 12 and only listen to one radio station which offers up the same 12 songs in continuous rotation, your spectrum of music awareness in terms of artists and genres is non-existent at best.  You likely can’t spell “jazz” much less name one artist within the genre.  Odds are you didn’t even know who Aretha Franklin was either, so your collective ignorance means nothing when used as a yardstick of Grammy credibility.

Eat your vegetables and then go clean your room.

OF COURSE you don’t know who Esperanza Spalding is.  You haven’t even passed geometry yet.  How much could you possibly know about ANYTHING?!  You’re not legally allowed to vote, enter the military, see an R-rated movie or stay out past 10 pm in a public place without being cited for curfew.  You can’t even drive to a Bieber concert or event.

OF COURSE you don’t know who she is.

There’s a whole world in which you’ve yet to investigate.  Believe it or not, there’s life after age 13.  It’s called the 8th grade.

The Grammys are awards voted upon by musical PEERS within the industry. The Best New Artist Award nominations are generated by the at-large membership through a voting process, a committee determines the winner.  This isn’t American Idol. Hitting redial on your smartphone 150 times within a 30-minute period will in no way improve an artist’s chances.

Your collective ignorance validates Mo’Kelly’s point why Spalding won and Bieber lost, not vice-versa.

Esperanza Spalding has been a lifelong musical prodigy, entering and subsequently TEACHING at the world-renown Berklee College of Music.  Often times her students were older than she was.  It should come as no surprise that Berklee graduates are rarely on pop radio. Berklee often requires a higher level of talent and class of musicianship.  It’s laughable to equate Justin Bieber with Esperanza Spalding and true musicians (i.e. her peers in the industry) innately know this to be true.  In a music award show which is gives awards for “Best” anything…musicianship probably matters.

Again, the Grammy Awards are voted upon/selected by PEERS in the industry, not pre-pubescent middle-schoolers. Expect a more favorable outcome at the Teen Choice Awards, that’s why it exists, for fools just your age.

The Grammy Awards has always prided itself on being an award show uninfluenced by an artist’s sales, popularity or frequency of radio rotation. It’s okay to disagree with the result, but you have at minimum a responsibility to better familiarize yourself with something and someone other than your favorite adolescent crush. You have the responsibility to not respond with taunts tainted with racism and other questionable rhetoric.

Editing Spalding’s Wikipedia page, inserting a “middle name” for her of “Quesadilla” or impressing upon her to “die” reminds of us all of how racism and ignorance are inextricably linked.  Congratulations to Esperanza Spalding on winning the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Not the “Most Popular” new artist…but the Best New Artist.

Know the difference.

Now go play outside Bieber Stans.

The Mo’Kelly Report is an entertainment journal with a political slant; published at The Huffington Post and EURWEB.com. It is meant to inform, infuse and incite meaningful discourse…as well as entertain. For more Mo’Kelly, https://mrmokelly.com. Mr. Mo’Kelly can be reached at [email protected].

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