Another legendary Grammys snub has come and gone, once again with Kendrick Lamar on the wrong side of it. This certainly feels awfully familiar to Kendrick fans: his last three albums, “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” “To Pimp A Butterfly,” and “DAMN.” all got Grammy nominations, but no Album of the Year awards. And to be fair, it might be a lot to expect “DAMN.”, packing lyrics like “Hail Mary, Jesus and Joseph / the great American flag is wrapped in drag with explosives” to do well at the generally apolitical Grammy Awards.

The Grammys think-pieces are already pouring out, as well. The tone this year is definitely resigned: “Grammys gonna Grammy,” as the saying goes. The Grammys have a distinct tradition of getting it wrong. But why is that?

The Grammys are chosen by the Recording Academy, a body of longtime industry professionals. What that essentially means is: middle-aged white businessmen. Now, I have nothing specific against middle-aged white businessmen. Some of my closest friends are future middle-aged white businessmen. My father happens to be a middle-aged white businessman. But let’s examine that for a second. Here are some adjectives that are frequently used to describe my father:

• Dignified
• Professional
• Serious

And here are some adjectives which are rarely used to describe my father:

• Hip
• Trendy
• With It
• Well-Versed In Youth Culture
• Understanding Of The Kinds Of Messages That Speak To The Challenges Facing The Current Generation

Hopefully, you see the problem here. My father has been a fairly consistent bellwether for the Grammys in the past: his favorite song of 2013 was Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s “Can’t Hold Us”, the irrepressibly triumphant roof-raiser off of “The Heist”. That was the same year Macklemore won both Best New Artist and Best Rap Performance over Kendrick Lamar, kicking off the tradition of snubbing Lamar at the Grammys.

The fundamental tension of the Grammy Awards is that the Recording Academy is the Establishment. It is The Man. That’s almost by definition. The Recording Academy isn’t hungry, driven young creatives; it’s successful, established marketers and salesmen. And The Man doesn’t know music. The Man isn’t going to get why Kendrick resonates with such urgency in 2018. That tension is looking increasingly impossible to resolve.

In fact, I would say that the Grammys problem is not a Recording Academy specific problem. I would go so far as to say that the Grammys problem is a natural outgrowth of the fact that it’s a gathering of the already successful trying to appreciate the critical merit of the newly successful.

There will always be a disconnect there, because what worked and what constituted good music two, three, or even four decades ago when the careers of the men in the Recording Academy were made is fundamentally different from what makes good music today, at least if you believe like I do that the best music can’t be disentangled from the social and historical context it was made in.

For the most part, all we can say is Grammys gonna Grammy. The Man is going to do as The Man do, and prefer the safe, comfortable, upbeat, and commercially-friendly to the daring, new, critical, and challenging. In the end, the Grammys don’t matter; DAMN. is the album that made history this year.