The easy highlight of the 2023 Grammys was the all-star salute to 50 years of hip-hop — a dazzling cavalcade of hits that drew from all across the genre’s history and geography. Earlier this week, CBS aired a Grammys-produced special that expanded on that idea. Questlove helped put the show together, and it featured legendary names like LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Rakim, E-40, Jeezy, Nelly, Rick Ross, Big Daddy Kane, De La Soul, Cypress Hill, DJ Quik, Bun B, and Too Short, as well as a DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince reunion. (At least one awards show isn’t scared of Will Smith.) But at least one old-school hip-hop luminary refused to take part.

KRS-One, one of the greatest rappers of all time, has long presented himself as the authentic voice of hip-hop culture. He was guarding those gates when he first came to prominence, chastising MC Shan for perceived disrespect in the mid-’80s. It was not exactly surprising that KRS-One didn’t take part in the show, but it’s still fun to hear him lay out his thinking.

KRS-One aired his grievances with the Grammys in a recent interview with Harold St. Louis. That interview has since been removed from YouTube, but TMZ has preserved the part where KRS lays it all out. I transcribed what KRS said, but I’d encourage you to watch it for yourself, since he’s such a great orator.

KRS-One is a hip-hop extremist. I’m not a violent extremist, no. I’m insane with this culture. I know I must’ve lost my mind in this. I remember hip-hop as sacred. Others don’t think of hip-hop like this, and I ain’t trying to force my way on nobody. But I’m having an experience within hip-hop that’s offering me health, awareness, wealth, knowledge. I don’t know what else to say.

So when I got the call, I immediately saw: Nah. Nah. First of all, it’s the Grammys? You get no respect here. None. None. You have no respect here. Now, we respect your existence. We know you exist. We know that you’re the Grammys. We understand that, and we respect that — your existence.

But you ignored hip-hop for 49 years. At the 50th year, you wanna call us? 49 years, you ignored us! The 50th year! That’s when you call! You couldn’t even call for 47 and gear it up to at least 50. At least get us into 47. No. You wait till the 50th year to wanna call hip-hop’s authentic teacher? Nah. You don’t get that privilege. I refuse to show up. Y’all go ahead and play games with yourselves.

Let’s just go with what we know to be the truth. So if you not dealing with the truth, you ain’t dealing with KRS. And we know the truth! We know that hip-hop is breaking, MCing, graffiti art, DJing. So what is all this other stuff y’all doing? So if you’re going to do a hip-hop 50th anniversary and you’re going to call hip-hop to it, you have to have hip-hop there. Hip-hop was not there. Rappers were there. Very respected rappers were there. But it wasn’t hip-hop!

Because hip-hop would’ve got on that mic and said, “Fuck the Grammys! You dissed us for 49 years!” That would’ve been in a rhyme. “You motherfuckers are corny!” We would’ve had that shit going in a freestyle if that was real hip-hop. But it wasn’t real hip-hop, so let y’all go ahead and have fun at a party. You’re just exploiting the culture so you could sell commercials to a gullible white audience.

On Instagram, Pete Rock agreed with KRS and built on what he had to say: “When you missed 60% of major artists and producers and DJ’s, that’s not a complete hip-hop 50 show.”

Apparently, KRS-One wasn’t the only person who declined to participate. On Twitter, Questlove says that he was especially bummed that MC Hammer didn’t want to be involved.

If you want to see how this went for yourself, you can stream A Grammy Salute To 50 Years Of Hip-Hop on Paramount+.