Despite recent controversies around these two comedians, Louis CK and Dave Chappelle have both been nominated for Grammy Awards this year.
CK’s show “Sincerely Louis CK” is nominated in the Best Comedy Album category, while Chapelle’s collaboration with the poet Amir Sulaiman, 8:46, is nominated for Best Spoken Word Album.
In 2018, five women who worked with CK in the past, have claimed inappropriate behavior by CK, including that he did something lewd in front of female comedians. Louis confirmed the claims were true.
After that, he released a surprise special in April last year, joking about the incident at a show called “Sincerely Louis CK,” the one nominated for a Grammy.
Chappelle’s “The Closer” was released on Netflix and prompted backlash from the LGBTQ community for comments deemed transphobic. Netflix then fired an employee for leaking information about the special.
Chapelle has three Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album in 2018, 2019 and 2020. This year he faces competition from Barack Obama and LeVar Burton in the Spoken Word category.
CK is up against Chelsea Handler, Nate Bargatze and Kevin Hart in the Best Comedy Album category.
Harvey Mason Jr. the Recording Academy’s CEO addressed the controversial nominees, saying the Grammys “won’t restrict the people who can submit their material for consideration. “We won’t look back at people’s history, we won’t look at their criminal record, we won’t look at anything other than the legality within our rules of, is this recording for this work eligible based on date and other criteria.”
Mason Jr. continued: “What we will control is our stages, our shows, our events, our red carpets. We’ll take a look at anyone who is asking to be a part of that, asking to be in attendance, and we’ll make our decisions at that point. But we’re not going to be in the business of restricting people from submitting their work for our voters to decide on.”
Meanwhile, here’s Dave’s speech from the Emmy’s back in 20202: