Hip-hop icon Chuck D has slammed the Recording Academy for putting its CEO/president Deborah Dugan on administrative depart shortly earlier than the Grammys
Along with his group, Public Enemy, scheduled to obtain a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy this April, his phrases took on added resonance. He claimed she was positioned on depart for “having her personal struggles” inside an academy “that thinks Public Enemy resulted in 1992.”
Dugan was surprisingly eliminated simply days earlier than the Jan. 26 Grammys, that are set for Staples Middle in Los Angeles. The present would have been Dugan’s first on the helm of the group, which she joined in August.
“The Board of Trustees felt this motion to be obligatory, as a result of severe issues that not too long ago had been delivered to our consideration,” interim Recording Academy President and CEO Harvey Mason Jr. mentioned in an announcement. “Whereas we’re unable to share the small print of the issues to guard worker privateness, please know that the Board has retained two unbiased third-party investigators to conduct unbiased investigations into allegations which were made.”
Dugan’s legal professional Bryan Freedman responded:
What has been reported isn’t almost the story that must be instructed. When our capacity to talk isn’t restrained by a 28-page contract and authorized threats, we are going to expose what occurs once you ‘step up’ on the Recording Academy, a public nonprofit.
Chuck D’s open letter blamed the “ignorant, testosterone-fueled, often outdated white males” who are likely to thwart any actual progress. “They wish to preserve it the established order and ensure issues like Hip Hop keep the poster baby of their fuckery,” he wrote. “In 1989, we protested the Grammys as a result of they refused to acknowledge a brand new artwork kind known as Hip Hop/Rap. I responded with the lyric, ‘Who offers a fuck a couple of goddamn Grammy.’ We fought to be acknowledged and for issues to alter. We kicked that door in for others to return by way of.”
