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R&B Finally Gets A Second Grammy Race In 2027

Pop and country have had two performance categories since 2011. R&B has had one. The Recording Academy just fixed the math, and the first ballot under the new rule is already sealed.

A singer performing on stage under warm stage light
A singer performing on stage under warm stage light
A singer performing on stage under warm stage light

R&B Finally Gets A Second Grammy Race In 2027

Pop and country have had two performance categories since 2011. R&B has had one. The Recording Academy just fixed the math, and the first ballot under the new rule is…

By K. Allen

By K. Allen

For fifteen ceremonies, pop and country artists each competed in two Grammy performance categories, one for solo records and one for duos, groups and collaborations. R&B artists had a single category for all of it. That ends in February 2027.

On 16 June 2026 the Recording Academy announced five new categories taking effect at the 69th Grammy Awards. One is Best R&B Collaboration or Duo/Group Performance. Best R&B Performance becomes Best R&B Solo Performance.

The version of this story going around is that R&B collaborations were losing, and now they will not have to. That part is not true. The record says something narrower and more useful.

The 2011 Cut Took Four R&B Categories And Left One. Pop’s Cut Left Two.

On 6 April 2011 the Academy announced it was going from 109 categories to 78. Then president Neil Portnow said the restructuring was meant to protect “the continued competition and prestige of the highest and only peer-recognized award in music.”

In R&B, four awards became one. Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance went in. So did Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and Best Urban/Alternative Performance.

What came out was Best R&B Performance, a single award covering solo artists, duos and groups alike.

Sade won the last R&B duo and group award in 2011, for “Soldier of Love.” That category had run since 1967.

Pop was cut in the same stroke and came out with two. The male and female pop vocal awards were folded into Best Pop Solo Performance. Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals were folded into Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

Country came out the same way. It kept Best Country Solo Performance and gained Best Country Duo/Group Performance. Both pop categories and both country categories have been awarded every year from 2012 through 2026.

R&B is the genre where the same restructuring produced one lane instead of two.

Collaborations Were Not Losing. They Won Five Of Fifteen.

This is where the easy version of the story falls apart. The Academy’s own winners list for Best R&B Performance covers fifteen ceremonies, 2012 through 2026. Sixteen trophies went out, because of one tie.

Five of those ceremonies were won by a collaboration, a duo or a group. Snarky Puppy featuring Lalah Hathaway took it in 2014 for “Something.” Beyoncé featuring Jay Z won in 2015 for “Drunk In Love.”

H.E.R. featuring Daniel Caesar won in 2019 for “Best Part.” Anderson .Paak featuring André “3000” Benjamin won in 2020 for “Come Home.” Silk Sonic shared the 2022 award.

So voters were not refusing to reward collaborative records. The problem was the arithmetic underneath. Every R&B artist, alone or paired, was competing for the same handful of slots.

Collaborations were not losing. They won about a third of the time in a category that gave all of R&B one set of slots.

The 2022 Tie Shows Exactly What One Category Was Doing

At the 64th Grammy Awards on 3 April 2022, Best R&B Performance ended in a tie. Silk Sonic’s “Leave The Door Open” and Jazmine Sullivan’s “Pick Up Your Feelings” both won.

One is a duo project two artists built together. The other is one woman and a vocal booth. Voters could not separate them, so the Academy handed out two statuettes.

Three other records were on that ballot. Snoh Aalegra’s “Lost You,” H.E.R.’s “Damage,” and Justin Bieber’s “Peaches” featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon.

Five nominees, two collaborative and three solo, judged by one question. Under the 2027 rules those five records would be sorted onto two separate ballots.

What The Rule Does To Somebody Standing On A Ballot

The Academy’s rule document says the new category covers “works by established duos or groups, as well as collaborative works between solo artists, duos and groups.” Read that as a working condition rather than a definition.

A singer who cut one record alone and one with a guest no longer has to watch her two records take slots from each other. A standing group stops being measured against a single vocal take. A solo artist stops running against two fanbases pushing one song.

Grammys CEO Harvey Mason jr. framed it as a genre problem. The new award “helps establish a dedicated space to recognize that collaboration is a defining element of R&B,” he said, “while reimagining Best R&B Performance as Best R&B Solo Performance ensures that those creators are also represented in our process.”

The Fix Stops At The Track

Here is what the announcement does not advertise. The new category is a performance award. It covers singles and tracks, and nothing past that.

Groups and duos still compete against solo artists everywhere else in the R&B categories. Look at Best Progressive R&B Album at the 68th Grammys on 1 February 2026. It put FLO, a London trio, and the duo Terrace Martin and Kenyon Dixon against three solo albums.

Durand Bernarr won it with “BLOOM.” The new category does not reach that ballot.

Best Traditional R&B Performance is untouched as well. Its description draws no line by lineup, and its winners include duos like Cee Lo Green and Melanie Fiona.

The fix stops at the track. A group that makes an album still runs against people who made one alone.

15

ceremonies R&B ran with a single performance award, 2012 through 2026

5

of those ceremonies won by a collaboration, duo or group

6

R&B categories on the 2027 ballot, up from five

Members Asked For This. Folk Proved The Route Works. Nobody In R&B Has Claimed It.

Categories come from members. The Academy calls it “the Grammys’ annual process of accepting proposals from the music creators and professionals who make up its membership body.” The Board of Trustees ratifies changes each spring.

Folk Alliance International said publicly that it “initiated a proposal to the GRAMMYs to re-establish the Traditional Folk Album award,” which was also cut in 2011. The group said the restoration “addresses a significant representation and credibility gap in the genre.”

No equivalent claim exists on the R&B side. No organization or artist has publicly said they filed the R&B proposal, and the Academy has not named one. The category arrived without a public author.

Three Other Changes Land On R&B Harder Than They Look

Ballot Plus is the largest. It is an opt-in alternative to the 10/3 voting structure, ten genre categories plus three in the General Field.

Under Ballot Plus a member can vote in up to 15 peer-related categories, regardless of field, based on verified professional credits. Mason said the point is ensuring “that ability and access is tied to credits.” That matters in a genre where the same producers and writers move between R&B, rap and pop.

Songwriters and composers of new material will now receive statuettes and Achievement Certificates on winning albums in most genre album categories. Producers and engineers already had them. In R&B, the writers collecting those are often the same people who assembled the collaborations the new category exists to judge.

The album threshold also drops. A record now needs 66 percent new recordings instead of 75 percent. The Academy said the change is meant “to reduce the exclusion of entries that are widely recognized throughout the music industry as new albums.”

An artist may also now be submitted for Best New Artist four times instead of three.

The other four new categories for 2027 are Best Asian Pop Music Performance, Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance and Best Traditional Folk Album. The fifth is Best Latin Song, which requires lyrics at least 51 percent in Spanish. Best Folk Album was renamed Best Contemporary Folk Album.

The First Ballot Under This Rule Is Already Made

The eligibility window for the 69th Grammys ran from 31 August 2025 to 28 August 2026. Entries closed on 21 August 2026. Both dates are behind us.

Nobody made a record to fit a category that did not exist when they cut it. Whatever fills Best R&B Collaboration or Duo/Group Performance in February was built under the old assumption.

That is the honest test. If the category fills with records nobody had to invent for it, then the ballot was the thing that was short, not the genre.

K. Allen, “R&B Finally Gets A Second Grammy Race In 2027,” certifiedFREQ, 18 September 2026. https://certifiedfreq.com

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