Some artists like to say they don’t care about awards. Terius “The-Dream” Nash is not one of them. When his album Love vs. Money was shut out of the Grammy nominations last week, the R&B singer and songwriter (“Umbrella,” “Single Ladies,” “Touch My Body”) was so peeved he went on an extended Twitter rant. “I couldn’t believe it,” he tells the Music Mix. “I grew up looking at the Grammys. It was a childhood infatuation with these people walking around with gold statues. I felt like they were the best, and that’s why I started working so hard.”
The-Dream says he wasn’t expecting to make it into an elite contest like Album of the Year, but he was surprised that Love vs. Money was left out of the Best Contemporary R&B Album category. (The nominees there were Beyoncé’s I Am…Sasha Fierce, T-Pain’s Thr33 Ringz, Jamie Foxx’s Intuition, Trey Songz’ Ready, and Pleasure P’s The Introduction of Marcus Cooper.) “I don’t think anybody does contemporary R&B albums better than me. I don’t know how to dunk; I don’t know how to throw a football 50 yards. But I know how to write some motherf—ing R&B songs!”
Speaking of writing R&B songs, The-Dream did pick up a couple of nominations this year for co-penning Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” — including one in the prestigious Song of the Year category. “I respect and appreciate that,” he says. But without any recognition for his own recordings, he’s not planning on attending the Grammys ceremony on Jan. 31. If “Single Ladies” should win Song of the Year, he says, “I’m probably not going to be up there to take the trophy.”In the meantime, The-Dream is hard at work on upcoming releases by Ciara (“We’re trying to get her back to where she was her best, and that was that first album“) and Katy Perry (“The stuff that I’m doing is really ’80s-driven”). And he’ll have another chance to catch Grammy voters’ ears (or not) when his own third album, Love King, arrives next spring. Barring any sudden turnaround in his performing career, though, The-Dream plans to make Love King his final release before returning to life as a behind-the-scenes hitmaker. “I won’t release another album just for the sake of doing it. I’d love to give those records to younger people.”
via EW
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