Grammys 2017: Chance the Rapper Wins for His Streaming-Only Album Coloring Book

It seems that the changes to eligibility for Grammy Awards have come good – Chance the Rapper's latest mixtape Coloring Book was the first streaming-only album to be nominated, and it has now become the first streaming-only album to win a Grammy. At the ceremony on Sunday in Los Angeles, the Chicago-born 23-year-old hip hop artist picked up the Grammy award for the Best Rap Album, beating the likes of Kanye West, Drake, and DJ Khaled. Coloring Book was an Apple Music exclusive for two weeks upon release, before arriving on other platforms, such as Spotify and SoundCloud.

Coloring Book won a total of three Grammy awards on the night – the second for Best Rap Performance for No Problem, featuring fellow hip hop artists Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz. Chance also won in the Best New Artist category, which cemented his reputation as one of the industry’s new leading lights. Coloring Book was among our top 10 albums from last year.

Chance’s work would have been ignored from music’s biggest night, were it not for the changes made by the Grammy organisation back in June 2016. Part of that was the modification to the eligibility rules, which meant recordings released solely via streaming services now qualified for a Grammy. With streaming services becoming a bigger money maker than CD sales last year, it’s high time such changes were incorporated across the board.

In other Grammys 2017 news, Adele won the most coveted awards – picking up Record of the Year, and Song of the Year for Hello, and Album of the Year for 25. David Bowie was awarded posthumous wins in the Best Alternative Music Album, Best Rock Performance, and Best Rock Song categories, for Blackstar.

And owing to the confusing eligibility rules – the 2017 ceremony awarded the best music released between October 2015 and September 2016 – there were belated congratulations for some, including John Williams for his work on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which beat out Bridge of Spies, The Hateful Eight, The Revenant, and Stranger Things.

Justin Timberlake picked up his tenth Grammy win, this time in the best song for a movie/ TV show department, for Can’t Stop The Feeling!, written for the animated film Trolls.