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Like most major awards shows, the #Grammys in recent years has attempted a precarious balancing act: The leading nominees in 2019 , like those from this year, come from hip-hop — namely #Kendrick Lamar, #Drake and #ChildishGambino — but they are joined by a handful of women from multiple genres, many of them newcomers to this particular party. That doesn’t seem like an accident: After tensions came to a boil after the ceremony in January, the Recording Academy said it actively sought younger voters and empowered a task force focused on diversity and inclusion. Here to discuss the new crop of nominees and what it might mean for the show in February is The New York Times pop music team: the chief pop critic Jon Pareles, the pop critic Jon Caramanica, the music editor Caryn Ganz and the pop reporter Joe Coscarelli. PARELES Let’s start with a caveat: Having the most nominations does not guarantee wins. It’s more a measure of how many categories someone can qualify for — and in the er...

Childish Gambino is aiming some super-sly criticism at several of other prominent performers in the hip-hop world with his new music video for his track “Feels Like Summer.” In the newly released visual, an animated Gambino (real name: Donald Glover) strolls through a neighborhood jam-packed with hitmakers, including Travis Scott and Nicki Minaj. The pair is sitting in a front yard playing with blocks. Minaj has built a house, which Scott sends tumbling to pieces by yanking out a key block. It’s hard to not interpret this as a nod to the rapper claiming the Number 1 spot on the Billboard charts when Minaj's new album Queen debuted, leaving her in second place and claiming that he used his girlfriend Kylie Jenner's fame to drum up more record sales. But the most striking moment of the video has to be when an animated Kanye West wearing a President Donald Trump-supporting “Make America Great Again” hat bursts into tears. Then, out of the shadows behind him comes former first...