Marilyn Manson Removed From Best Rap Song Grammy Nominations
When this year’s Grammy nominations came out last week, one of the big surprises was that Marilyn Manson was nominated twice. Manson has been nominated for Grammys before, but over the past year, a number of women have come forward to accuse Manson of assault and sexual abuse — a horrifying pattern of behavior that seems to go back decades. In a troll move, Kanye West featured Manson on his album Donda and posed with Manson and DaBaby at his Chicago listening event. That led to more Grammy nominations.
Donda is up for Album Of The Year at the Grammys, while West’s track “Jail” is up for Best Rap Song. Because of Grammy rule changes, all the songwriters who worked on Donda and “Jail” were named as nominees. After the nominations came out, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said, “We won’t restrict the people who can submit their material for consideration. We won’t look back at people’s history; we won’t look at their criminal record.” But the Academy has since removed one of Manson’s nominations.
As The New York Times reports, the Academy has withdrawn Manson’s Best Rap Song nomination. The reason seems procedural. Manson is a credited songwriter on “Jail, Pt. 2” but not on the version of “Jail” currently included on Donda. Since Kanye West has a history of meddling with his albums post-release, it seems possible that this could change and that Manson could get the nomination back again. In any case, Manson is still nominated for Donda.
In other Marilyn Manson news, TMZ reports that the LAPD raided his home on Monday to investigate those sexual assault allegations. Detectives from the Special Victims Unit executed a search warrant, seizing hard drives. Manson was reportedly not home at the time, so the police had to force their entry.