Kanye West’s Donda was a last-minute addition to the 2022 Grammy Awards Album of the Year nominees, The New York Times reports. According to the outlet, Ye’s 27-song effort and Taylor Swift’s Evermore were added to the nominations list on Monday (Nov. 22) — one day before the full list was announced — after the Recording Academy decided to expand the number of nominees from eight to 10.
Kanye’s Donda is also nominated for Best Rap Album, and he’s also nominated in the Best Melodic Rap Performance and Best Rap Song categories.
The decision also impacted other major categories, The Times reports, including Record of the Year. Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” and ABBA’s “I Still Have Faith in You” were last-minute additions to the category on Monday.
The newly expanded Song of the Year category also brought in nominations for Doja Cat’s “Kiss Me More” and “Right on Time” by Brandi Carlile. Baby Keem and composer Arooj Aftab were also reportedly the latest additions to the Best New Artist category.
The Times determined which artists were last-minute additions after obtaining a Grammys “final nominations list,” which the outlet reports was curated several days before the official list was announced on Tuesday (Nov. 23). The list only included eight nominees for the four major categories.
Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. celebrated the categories’ expansion from eight to 10 nominees on Tuesday, saying it made “room for more music, more artists and more genres, and to embrace the spirit of inclusion.”
“We saw it as an incredible opportunity for us to honor more artists and shine a light on more great music and potentially offer a greater opportunity for more genres of music to be honored,” he added to Variety. “It’s something that we’ve talked about for quite some time, but it ended up happening fairly recently. We looked at the voting and the amount of submissions [for the 2022 Grammys] and saw it as a great opportunity.”
As reported by REVOLT, the 64th Annual Grammy Awards will be broadcast from Los Angeles’ Staples Center on Jan. 31.