The Grammy Black Music Collective event honored Dr. Dre, Missy Elliott, Lil Wayne and Sylvia Rhone and featured Snoop Dogg, Ciara and Busta Rhymes.
With no offense intended to any other parties, the inaugural Black Music Collective Grammy-Week throwdown was the highlight of last year’s Grammy Week — with performances from Summer Walker, John Legend, Muni Long and others, and there was such a general positive and proud vibe to the whole event that the Academy decided to do it up even bigger this year.
Held at the Hollywood Palladium, it was a sort of mini-MusiCares event, in that four individuals were honored with the inaugural Global Impact Award — Dr. Dre, Missy Elliott, Lil Wayne and Epic Records Chairman-CEO Sylvia Rhone — and did not themselves perform, but instead each got a brief tribute set performed by other artists. It was an ambitious step up and there were a couple of production-related hiccups, but they were far outweighed by the bright moments — and it’s no coincidence that the honorees come from a golden age of hip-hop, the early ‘90s, which was clearly the music that many in the audience grew up on.
Lifetime achievement-type awards are also a relatively novel situation for hip-hop artists. “To tell you the truth, I was a little bit nervous when Harvey called me about this award because I wondered if he knew something I didn’t,” Dre deadpanned during his acceptance speech, referring to Recording Academy chief Harvey Mason Jr.
