STORY · GLOBAL
The Reggae Grammy argument
Well supported
One category, a whole family of genres, and a recurring question: who counts as reggae?
The debate around the Grammy Best Reggae Album category - its single-slot design, Koffee's historic 2020 win, and the 2022 result that reignited questions of origin and ownership.
One slot for a family of sounds
The Recording Academy honours reggae with a single Best Reggae Album category. Supporters value the global recognition; critics note that roots, dub, fusion and dancehall all compete for one trophy, an argument revisited every awards season and logged as reception evidence.
Koffee makes history
In January 2020 Koffee won for 'Rapture' - at nineteen, the first woman and youngest winner in the category's history. For many it read as a generational and gender shift, a rare moment when women in Jamaican music held the biggest global stage; others cautioned against reading one win as structural change.
Who counts as reggae
Two years later the US band SOJA won over five Jamaican nominees. Some commentators and artists argued the category should centre the music's Afro-Jamaican origins; others - including fellow nominees Etana and Gramps Morgan, and Chronixx - publicly congratulated the band and said the award honours the music regardless of nationality. The atlas records the positions, not a verdict, with Koffee's milestone and the SOJA result both part of the same long argument tracked in Billboard.
The trophy is small; the question of who it belongs to is not.