Will Coco Jones follow the same Grammy path as her R&B predecessors SZA, Jazmine Sullivan and India.Arie
There’s an interesting coincidence in Grammy history when it comes to women in R&B. This year new star Coco Jones was nominated for five awards, including Best New Artist. Jones’s nominations were mostly a given, especially as she has swept BNA prizes from the BET Awards, the NAACP Image Awards, and most recently the Soul Train Music Awards. Plus she had a breakout hit with “ICU” becoming a viral smash. Jones also picked up noms for Best R&B Performance and Best R&B Song for “ICU,” Best Traditional R&B Performance for the Babyface-assisted “Simple” and Best R&B Album for “What I Didn’t Tell You (Deluxe).” While Jones deserves those impressive bids, there’s a chance she might not win any. She’s up against Record of the Year nominees Victoria Monét and SZA in all of them, and those two have had even more commercial and critical success this past year. As such, Jones could go zero-for-five.
Jones’s situation isn’t unique, though. This wouldn’t be the first (or second) time an R&B hopeful for BNA is shut out with five nominations. In fact, the last time this happened was to the person who might win most of Jones’s nominations. At the 2018 Grammys SZA lost all of her five nominations, including Best R&B Performance (“The Weekend”), Best R&B Song (“Supermodel”) and Best New Artist. Like Jones, many expected that. If you look at Gold Derby’s 2018 Grammy odds, you’ll see that she wasn’t expected to win her nominations, with her closest call being Best New Artist. Still, there’s a good chance that she was number-two in most if not all of her races, so it wasn’t that SZA wasn’t competitive. Ultimately she ended up winning her first Grammy two years ago for the bubbly “Kiss Me More” with Doja Cat, and she will likely pick up more new statuettes soon for her blockbuster “SOS” album.
Taking it further back, there’s another example. At the 2009 Grammys R&B breakout Jazmine Sullivan picked up five nominations including Best New Artist. Her nominations were almost the same as Jones’s: Best New Artist, Best R&B Song and Best R&B Female Performance for “Bust Your Windows,” Best Traditional R&B Performance for “In Love With Another Man” and Best Contemporary R&B Album for “Fearless.” While Sullivan wasn’t widely predicted for Best New Artist either, being up against heavy hitters like Adele, Duffy, and the Jonas Brothers, she still seemed to have a shot in the R&B categories. But it wasn’t meant to be. Like SZA, she probably was the runner-up in a few of her categories, especially with her hit “Bust Your Windows.” And like SZA, she won her first Grammys two years ago: Best R&B Performance for “Pick Up Your Feelings” and Best R&B Album for “Heaux Tales.”
Other new, talented R&B women have been shut out the year of their BNA noms, like India.Arie, Brandy, Jill Scott and Keri Hilson. All of those women save Hilson went on to win Grammys later, perhaps because they’d shown voters they weren’t flashes in the pan. Consider that this year Monét is expected to win Best New Artist and Best R&B Album. But Monét didn’t just arrive on the scene; she has been a respected songwriter for a decade and likely has enough industry clout built up to justify all this awards hype.
It would be unfair to say that the Grammys dislike female R&B artists, per se: Alicia Keys, Toni Braxton and Mariah Carey all won Best New Artist. However, they were already undeniable superstars when they won. Otherwise it’s hard to get immediate recognition. For example, H.E.R., a current Grammy darling, was up for five awards including Album of the Year in 2019. Despite that, she lost Best New Artist to Dua Lipa, who couldn’t even score a nomination in her own pop genre that year. It seems like pop artists can win BNA with shorter resumes. See also Alessia Cara, who beat SZA but whose career ended up paling in comparison. Cara had less critical support than SZA, and her album sales weren’t through-the-roof. New pop artists might be afforded a benefit of the doubt that R&B female breakouts aren’t.
Jones’s Grammy fate isn’t written in stone, though. She may yet take an award home. Her best shot might be Traditional R&B Performance, where she’s against album tracks from Monét and SZA, and respect for Babyface might help Jones as well. Either way, she seems to have a bright future ahead of her. And as history shows, her Grammy might come later if not this year. How much later? One never knows. India.Arie only had to wait a year; Jazmine Sullivan waited 12.
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