Music

R&B Singer Aaradhna Slammed The NZ Music Awards For Lumping All The “Brown People” Together

She refused to accept the Urban/Hip Hop award and gave it away to another nominee.

by Sinead Stubbins  18 November 2016

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The insistence of music awards shows to have an ‘urban’ category has been fairly contentious in the last few years, particularly when it comes to the Grammys. One of the criticisms is that the category often lumps together a bunch of musically diverse artists seemingly on the basis of them being non-white. Cool, huh?

Last night an artist actually spoke out about this division. At the New Zealand Music Awards, New Zealand R&B singer Aaradhna called the awards show on the reductive category while receiving an award for Best Urban/Hip Hop album. “So this song is ‘Brown Girl’ and it speaks on many things, it speaks on racism and being placed in a box and for me, I feel like if I was to accept this, I would feel like I’m not being truthful in my song,” she said on stage.

“I feel like if you are putting a soul singer next to a hip hop artist, it’s not fair. I’m a singer, I’m not a rapper, I’m not a hip hop artist, it feels like I’ve been placed in the category of brown people.”

“We need a soul R&B category.”

Her remarks attracted cheers and a standing ovation from the crowd, particularly when she invited hip hop group SWIDT on stage to accept the award instead.

Aaradhna was also praised on Twitter for pushing back against the urban category, which has apparently long been a debated section of the New Zealand Music Awards.