Kaytranada Is The First Black Artist To Win Grammys Best Dance/Electronic Album Award
Kaytranada received the award for his album, Bubba.
Kaytranada was the recipient of this year’s Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album, making him the first Black artist to ever receive the award.
When the award was first introduced in 2005, it was referred to as the “Best Electronic/Dance Album” — the name would stay that way until 2012, when it was changed to “Best Dance/Electronica Album” before becoming “Best Dance/Electronic Album” in 2015 — and was won by Basement Jaxx for their album, Kish Kash.
Sixteen years later, and Kaytranada has won the award for his album, Bubba. He also won this year’s Best Dance Recording award, which has been around a little bit longer than the Best Dance Electronic Album. Donna Summers and Giorgio Moroder were the first recipients of the award back in 1998 for their song “Carry On.”
Recently, Kaytra spoke with Variety about specifically making Bubba as an electronic/dance album.
“I definitely did the dance/electronic influence, but from the ground up, the genre is really hip-hop,” he said. “In every genre that I’m trying to do, I’m definitely going to add my influence from hip-hop and making beats to it, to every creation I’m making. So maybe the next project, I might just go back to it and just make it more hip-hop, but we’ll just see how it goes. At this point I don’t think about genres like that. Especially with the next record, I’m not going to even think about genres.”
Bubba, which was released in 2019, was the follow-up to his 2016 debut album, 99.9%.