title: “Sour Notes” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-28” author: “Lauren Davis”
Yet even as Greene was announcing the decision to move the Sept. 11 awards show to Los Angeles, hundreds of hip-hop recording artists were converging on Miami Beach’s Jackie Gleason Theater on Monday afternoon to celebrate their own genre’s premier prizefest, the third annual Source Hip-Hop Music Awards. Miami Beach officials had braced themselves for a weekend of scuffles and street crime, but a heavy presence of uniformed cops and Muslim security personnel kept the peace. One of hip-hop’s most famous devotees gave the city the kind of ringing endorsement that most mayors only dream of. “Miami was a fabulous choice,” gushed Shaquille O’Neal, the Los Angeles Laker superstar and part-time recording artist. “The police department and the Nation of Islam have been doing a beautiful job of keeping things safe and secure.”
These sharply contrasting views of Miami could not have come from two more unlikely sources. Relatively few African-Americans think of Miami as a particularly friendly place. Racial friction between the city’s small black community and its burgeoning Latino population helped spark two bloody riots in the 1980s, and those latent tensions flared anew last May when an invasion of 250,000 mostly African-American youths produced over 200 arrests in Miami Beach over the long Memorial Day weekend. Fanning the climate of anxiety surrounding this year’s hip-hop music awards was the brawl that interrupted last year’s show in southern California. For all of hip-hop’s fearsome reputation as a nasty subculture that glorifies violence and denigrates women and gays, the festivities went off pretty quietly. Miami Beach police reported less than 100 arrests for mostly minor offenses ranging from disorderly conduct to drinking alcohol in public. The most serious incident involved a postceremony fight that left three people hospitalized with knife wounds. “It’s good to see that we’re all maturing,” said rapper RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan group. “Hip-hop has had a bad image from day one, and we’re just trying to build it up.”
On paper at least, the Latin Grammys seemed much more suited to Miami than the hip-hop awards bash. Among the city’s top-rank superstars are recording artists of the home-grown variety (Gloria Estefan) as well as recent imports (Colombian pop diva Shakira). Estefan’s husband Emilio had lobbied Grammy officials for months to move the awards ceremony from L.A., where the first annual show was held last year. And local hoteliers and nightclub owners were relishing the prospect of hauling in their share of the $35 million in revenues that the awards show was expected to generate.
But it all fell apart for reasons that will reinforce Miami’s banana-republic image. Grammy executives thought they had a deal with Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas that would have kept anti-Castro protestors at a healthy distance from the main entrance to the American Airlines Arena. But the venue also falls under the jurisdiction of the City of Miami and its mayor, Joe Carollo, and he threw his support behind a last-minute demand by a coalition of relatively obscure anti-Castro exile groups to be placed closer to the arena. Carollo is facing eight challengers to his bid for re-election later this fall, and skeptics immediately accused the mayor of jumping on a handy bandwagon to boost his approval rating among older Cuban-American voters. “Anyone can point a finger at me,” declared Carollo within hours of the announcement that the Latin Grammys would stay in L.A. after all. “What I’ve stood up for are the First Amendment rights of the Constitution.” The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union backed the Miami mayor’s call for a new protest site and accused Grammy organizers of trying to keep protesters out of sight and earshot of the celebrities and guests who would be in attendance.
None of this really had to happen. It was never clear whether any of the Cuba-based musicians who had received Grammy nominations and would be targeted by anti-Castro protesters would actually show up for the proceedings. And if the Miami Beach police department managed to control thousands of young, beer-swilling hip-hop music lovers over four hot summer days, their counterparts in downtown Miami surely could have kept a few dozen aging Cuban exiles in check for one night.
There was plenty of blame to go around for the latest blow to Miami’s already battered image. In the end, skittish Grammy organizers seemed to have concluded that the city’s volatile political climate just wasn’t worth the risks and hassles. Having lost the fight to keep Elian Gonzalez in Little Havana and the Latin Grammys in downtown Miami, local residents could be forgiven for wondering who or what might be next to forsake their fair city. Baseball’s slumping Florida Marlins? Or maybe O.J. Simpson?
