McKenzie hails ‘worthy’ Reggae Grammy nominees

The nominees for the Best Reggae Album category for the 2026 Grammy Awards have been hailed as "veterans in their own rights" by musical analyst Clyde McKenzie.

This year, all the nominees are local, home-grown talent, and McKenzie opined that this shows "that we have depth in terms of the talent".

"But I don't think we should necessarily extrapolate from that and seh it's a trend because next year, yuh might have five foreigners. So the safe thing to say is rejoice at what is happening and really acknowledge that these people are worthy, they are very good artistes, still very young but are veterans in their own rights," he said. The nominees are reggae artistes Lila Ike, Keznamdi, Mortimer, and Jesse Royal, along with dancehall heavyweight Vybz Kartel. McKenzie noted that Kartel's involvement really shows how much he has been making the most of all his life-changing situations.

"He's been capitalising on them big tim, and one wouldn't be surprised if he walked away with the prize," he said. "There are some real talented people in the mix, and every one of them is worthy of praise. They have been doing their jobs and doing it well."

He underscored that apart from Keznamdi, who is "of a rich musical pedigree", most of the nominees' roots and paths to the music industry are non-traditional. With three of the five artistes being first-time Grammy nominees of the 'younger generation' of music, McKenzie said this might shift the future of the Grammy landscape.

"I would hope to see more people like these in the future line-ups. That would signal some level of sustainability. We don't want this to be a flash in the pan kinda thing because these people have been around for a while, and they have been doing well," he said.

McKenzie acknowledged that there is a a criticism that the Grammys are out of touch with the artistes' quality and their impacts.

"It's not just with reggae, but from time to time, people seem to think that they [The Recording Academy] have missed the boat. However, in some instances, people conflate popularity with quality. The Grammys is supposed to be recognition from your peers, which is suggestive that your work exemplifies a certain kind of technical and artistic quality, which satisfies the standards of your peers in the music industry. There's still a lot of subjectivity in this process, so many times, people might make guesses that are inconsistent with how the public feel," said McKenzie. However, he opined that artistes' visibility and name recognition are just as important when vying for a Grammy.

He advised artistes who are trying to break into the market to "come with something that is familiar to people, be innovative and put a new twist on something that is old".

"In that, people don't have to extend that amount of bandwidth to identify you and the music, and it's easier for them to absorb and focus more on you while vibing to something they already knew," he explained.

The Grammy Awards will be held on February 1, 2026.