Kanye West Misses 2022 Grammys, Still Takes Home Two Awards for ‘Donda’

Kanye “Ye” West was absent from the 2022 Grammys held Sunday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas but still walked away with two awards.

Early in the night, West won in the best melodic rap performance category alongside The Weeknd and Lil Baby for “Hurricane.” The category honors a solo or collaborative performance containing both elements of R&B melodies and rap. Later, West’s song “Jail” took best rap song, with Dwayne Abernathy Jr., Shawn Carter, Raul Cubina, Michael Dean, Charles M. Njapa, Sean Solymar, West and Mark Williams, and Jay-Z sharing the award.

Disgraced rocker Marilyn Manson, who has been accused of sexual assault and is being investigated by the LAPD for some of those allegations, is featured on the track and was initially nominated alongside Ye before the Recording Academy removed his nomination, citing that Manson was not a writer on the song.

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Ye was also nominated in the best rap album category for Donda and album of the year twice — once for Donda and once for Lil Nas X’s Montero.

A representative for West confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that an unannounced 2022 Grammys performance was pulled due to “concerning online behavior” from the rapper. A report published by The Blast alleged Ye received a call from the Recording Academy notifying him that he was scrapped from this year’s Grammys performer lineup. While West is up for five nominations this year — including the late addition for album of the year — at the time of the report, Ye had not been publicly confirmed to perform at the April 3 show alongside the other artists in the Grammys first round of artist announcements.

The news followed the Donda rapper’s temporary suspension from Instagram on March 16, after he published a post featuring a slur that targeted The Daily Show host Trevor Noah. In the since-deleted post, lyrics to “Kumbaya” were replaced with a variation of a racial epithet based on a minstrel character in response to a Daily Show segment in which Noah addressed the rapper’s online fixation on, and harassment of, both Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson by calling it “terrifying to watch.” During the 24-hour suspension, the Grammy-winning musician was unable to post, comment or send DMs.

West’s response to the Daily Show and Grammys host was the latest in an ongoing saga around his divorce from Kardashian, who was declared legally single March 2. West has made numerous social media comments about their split, their children and Davidson, with the rapper even apologizing in February for posts where he published private texts with Kardashian on his public account. The Grammy winner also depicted himself decapitating a claymation version of Davidson in his video for “Eazy.”