Roddy Ricch headed into the 2021 Grammy Awards with six nominations, but ultimately walked away with zero trophies.
The 22-year-old rapper says he wasn’t upset about the outcome, as he was already mentally preparing himself for such a scenario. He recalled speaking to his friends and family after the nominations were announced, and kept reminding them that Jay-Z had secured eight nods at the 2018 Grammys, and got completely shut out.
“Everybody was just like, ‘Why you saying that? Why is it so negative?’” Roddy said on Power Mornings with Nick Cannon. “I don’t know. I just had a feeling like, I ain’t real worried about it. So I end up going, and I ain’t win. But I wasn’t mad. I ain’t going into it expecting anything, ’cause I’m already a winner.”
Roddy went on to tell Cannon that he had put a lot of time and energy into his music and was understandably disappointed by the losses—so much so, he decided to take a break from music.
“I just sat back. I was talkin’ to my n***as, I’m like, ‘Man, I’mma chill back. I’mma kick back on the music for a little while,’” he recalled, before sharing his interaction with Jay on the night of the 2021 Grammys. “So I had seen Jay at the Grammys, and he didn’t say ‘What’s up?’ … The first thing he asked me was, ‘When you dropping music?’ At the time it didn’t really hit me, but later on, I just thought of the power of that. I manifested—just talking about how they [the Recording Academy] did him one year, and it happened to me.”
Hov addressed the snub in the 2018 track “APESHIT,” in which he raps: “Tell the Grammy’s fuck that oh for eight shit.”
“After that, I kind of wanted to back up, but [Jay] really gave me that inspiration to kind of, like, ‘You gotta keep going. You gotta just see it through. When you got something to talk about, say it, put it out, and keep it going,” Roddy continued. “So I just wanna publicly appreciate Jay-Z for that. It helped me keep going.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Roddy expressed his desire to collaborate with Kendrick Lamar, whom he refers to as his “big bro.” But unfortunately, they haven’t had the chance to connect. Roddy has spoken highly of K.Dot in a number of interviews, and has credited him as a major source of inspiration.
“Kendrick Lamar taught me that life experience is an important part of being a good illustrator,” he said back in 2019. “When you’re illustrating a story, you have to go based off of your personal experiences. When you write about shit you don’t know about, it’s not going to sound right, because you’ll miss the details.”
You can check out Roddy’s full interview with Cannon up top.
