Kanye West on Beck and Beyonce for Grammy Award Win: Did West Raise a Valid Point?

Who could forget the MTV Video Music Awards of 2009 when Kanye West interrupted a flustered Taylor Swift to declare to everyone that Beyoncé should have won the award for Best Video?

Well, if anyone did, they got a déjà vu moment when West almost did the same stunt during the 2015 Grammy's when Beck won for Best Album. "Almost" because at the last minute, as he was already on stage and reaching for the mike, he changed his mind and walked away. He did, however, let loose his opinion after the ceremony. West insisted that Beck should have "respected artistry" by giving up his award to Beyoncé.

When it happened in 2009, responses had been unanimously negative as West was shown as a big bully trying to take away a seemingly well-deserved award from a young, innocent girl. This time, responses have been slightly more mixed. While there was the usual outrage, and the usual comments about West's arrogance and bullying behavior, there have also been a few voices claiming that West has a valid point, but just he had gone about it in the wrong way.

The dissenting voices have claimed there there appears to be a trend in the Grammy's of black artists, who are expected to win awards, who find themselves losing to white artists, who are also surprised that they won. Last year, the Grammy's awarded three out of four of the hip-hop awards to Mackelmore and Lewis, who while certainly not talentless, seemed to have, on that night alone, garnered more awards than most of the popular hip-hop artists out there.

Some have even gone as far to ask the question, why did Mackelmore win when Kendrick Lamar was so clearly the one who deserved the award last year? Whether Beck deserved to win is probably another argument altogether, and scores of music industry opinion leaders have praised Beck winning the award after more than a decade of writing his own music, performing his own instruments, and compiling his own albums without hoards of others putting in the leg work to produce the album.

Critics who support West's recent opinion that Beyonce clearly should have won this year, also point to a historical review of the awards given out in the past, and claim that it seems to indicate that the Grammy's do tend to favor white artists over black artists, even in the categories that seem to lean more towards black artists. So is West right? Does he have a point? Again, that may be debatable more than his methods of making his point.