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LGBT groups have called on organizers of this weekend's Grammy Awards to denounce nominee Buju Banton, according to ABC News.
Banton, 36, whose real name is Mark Anthony Myrie, is up for a best reggae album award for his "Rasta Got Soul" release at the Grammys on Sunday. He is currently in jail in Florida awaiting trial on a cocaine charge and will not be attending the awards show. This is his fourth Grammy nomination.
Through his music, Banton promotes a culture of violence against the LGBT community, singing in his most notorious song "Boom, Bye Bye" that "faggots get up and run" when he comes, that "they have to die," and that he will shoot them in the head or "burn them up bad."
In a full page advertisement Friday in L.A.'s Daily Variety, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center urged Grammy organizers to use Sunday's televised ceremony to denounce music "that promotes or celebrates violence against any group of people."
The Recording Academy has said that the Grammy Awards honor musical achievement "regardless of politics" and that artists from many different political and cultural perspectives have been nominated over the years.
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