Once again the Grammy Awards sparked a week’s worth of controversy, name-calling and racism accusations. Adele’s 25 beat Beyoncé’s Lemonade, which surprised many – including Adele herself, who spent her acceptance speech praising Beyoncé and insisting that Lemonade deserved it more.

Between Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar, the “Grammys are racist” conversation has dominated commentary for four years running. Lamar and Bey alone have controversially lost to Adele, Taylor Swift, Beck and Daft Punk for Album of the Year, while Macklemore beat Good Kid m.A.A.d City for Best Rap Album in 2014. (Like Adele, he did publicly apologise for “robbing” Lamar of the award.)

2013 – mumford over frank
2014 – daft punk over kendrick
2015 – beck over beyonce
2016 – taylor over kendrick
2017 – adele over beyonce
???

— very festive tweets (@adam_lewis) February 13, 2017

This week’s debate is almost identical to last year’s when Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly – an album so categorically impactful that it’s one of only four hip-hop records ever to be immortalised in the Harvard Library as objectively canonical and representative of the entire genre – lost out to Taylor Swift’s 1989.

In a new interview with Pitchfork, Recording Academy president Neil Portnow made a rather idealistic claim. “We don’t, as musicians, in my humble opinion, listen to music based on gender or race or ethnicity. When you go to vote on a piece of music—at least the way that I approach it—is you almost put a blindfold on and you listen. It’s a matter of what you react to and what in your mind as a professional really rises to the highest level of excellence in any given year.”

A beautiful sentiment no doubt, but … really? Is Portnow actually suggesting that one can listen to Lemonade without making a necessary connection to its context? Not only is that dreamily reductive, it’s downright impossible when you’re discussing an album so black, so female – and so fucking proud of it – that it simply wouldn’t exist without these pillars. Its connection to gender, race and ethnicity is specifically what pushed it to the highest level of excellence in 2016.

History is changing, sure. The Academy and industry as a whole is far more diverse than it once was. But it’ll take a lot more time and effort to, uh, shake it off.

But, Hang On, Didn’t Chance The Rapper Win Best New Artist?

He did. In fact, Chance is the first black artist to win it since Lauryn Hill in 1999. In the past decade, only five other black artists have won in the Big Four categories (Best New Artist, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year), and two of those are featured guests (Daft Punk ft. Nile Rodgers, Fun ft. Janelle Monáe).

In the Pitchfork interview, Portnow used this to denounce the claims: “You don’t get Chance the Rapper as the Best New Artist of the year if you have a membership that isn’t diverse and isn’t open-minded and isn’t really listening to the music.”

This is true, to an extent. But the Academy’s open-mindedness was probably less about his music and more about the dramatic upheaval to the Awards themselves, caused by a campaign Chance singlehandedly spearheaded. Making streaming-only releases eligible for Grammys was colossal news that travelled much further than hip-hop and indeed the music industry. It was news that arguably earned him far more Academy-wide attention than his Best Rap Album-winning mixtape Coloring Book.

Alright, So Who’s To Blame For The Lack Of Diversity?

Sure, you might imagine a handful of stuffy old white men smoking cigars, waving Confederate flags and stroking albino tigers while chortling at the concept of black artists winning things. But in reality it’s far more boring, and far more democratic.

The Grammy Awards are voted on by about 14,000 members of the Recording Academy.

Academy members are eligible to vote if they’re credited (singing, producing, engineering, etc.) on at least six physical releases, or at least 12 digital releases. Failing that, they can be endorsed by existing members. They have to pay a $100 annual membership fee, and that’s it. It’s remarkably easy. You probably already know someone that fits the bill.

To be clear, those 14,000 people don’t vote on every award, only genres where they have evidenced expertise. For example, Drake could vote for Best Rap Album, but probably not for Best Classical Album. The only exceptions are The Big Four. Everyone can vote on these.

Once albums are submitted (there are typically around 20,000 submissions per year, but this probably rose sharply with streaming-only permissions), around 150 experts in various fields check that each submission meets various qualifications, after which nominations are made, cutting it down to the five final selections per category. This is where the Academy members come in and vote in their relevant fields. On average this equates to 20 categories per person, plus the Big Four (to recap: Best New Artist, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year). Once the final nominations are in, members pick the winners, again in their relevant categories as well as the Big Four.

Pretty simple, really.

Here’s a little perspective. Around 14.2 million people voted in the last Australian federal election. Roughly 130 million Americans voted in their election last year. More than 2.2 million people voted in the Triple J Hottest 100.

Realistically, 14,000 people voting across 420 nominees in 84 categories is not really that much. As Portnow said: “Somebody could either receive or not receive a Grammy based on one vote. It could be that tight.”

But If It’s So Easy To Vote, Why Don’t More Artists Do It?

Bingo. Think about how many artists are eligible to vote. Many, many, many more than just 14,000.

Singers, rappers, session musicians, mixing engineers, producers, and anyone else involved in the music industry can be eligible to vote, meaning there may be a pretty simple solution to the Grammys problem.

Speaking to Billboard this week, Grammy trustee Helen Bruner said: “The voters spoke, and [the result says] there is still a generational gap when it comes to the approach of making records … They’ll say ‘I can’t play ‘Formation’ on the piano, but I can play ‘Hello.’’”

I’ll bet Frank Ocean can play ‘Formation’ on the piano. Kanye West, too. The same would apply to hundreds of young musicians. Wouldn’t their time be better spent voting for diverse artists rather than boycotting the whole thing?

The Academy voters are the Award gatekeepers, and there’s nothing stopping thousands of young artists participating in the process and making the Grammy Awards more inclusive, relevant and, yes, culturally representative.

Speaking to Billboard, Portnow said, “[Some of] the comments I’ve seen come from not understanding at all how this works. It’s one thing to be a critic, and another to join and vote and be part of the change that you want to see.”

“I understand that people might feel left out. But it’s really simple: Participate and vote, and then you’re part of the conversation,” he continued. “Not only do we encourage and welcome that, we need it.”

If you, or somebody you know, has credits on six or 12 tracks, at least one of which came out in the last five years, you might be eligible to vote for the Grammys. Don’t just boycott them, don’t just criticise them – change them. Here’s how to apply.

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Lauren Ziegler is a music journalist and founder of Howl & Echoes. You can argue with her about hip-hop on Twitter @ZieglerLauren