The 2025 Grammy nominations were announced on Nov. 8, with artists from all genres excited to have their work recognized.
Five names were called in the Best Progressive R&B Album category: Avery*Sunshine’s So Glad to Know You (BigShine Recordings); Durand Bernarr’s En Route (DSING Records/Create Music Group); Childish Gambino’s Bando Stone & the New World (RCA Records); Kehlani’s Crash (Atlantic Records); and NxWorries’ Why Lawd? (Stone Throw Records).
According to the Recording Academy, “This category is intended to highlight albums that include the more progressive elements of R&B and may include samples and elements of hip-hop, rap, dance, and electronic music. It may also incorporate production elements found in pop, euro-pop, country, rock, folk, and alternative.”
Interestingly, all the artists nominated are first-time nominees in this category. It’s also worth noting that three of the five albums nominated were released independently.
It’s worth noting Anderson .Paak, Kehlani, and Childish Gambino were previously nominated for Best Urban Contemporary Album. Since the latter category was renamed to Best Progressive R&B Album with updated criteria in June 2020, they are still considered first-time nominees under the new award, per confirmation from the Recording Academy to Rated R&B.
Durand Bernarr, on EP three and album two, is nominated for his visual EP, En Route, which was released via DSING Records/Create Music Group.
The project was initially shared on the direct-to-music platform EVEN and officially released on May 31. He recorded it in five days at Spotify’s Coke Studio in Los Angeles.
“En Route is the by-product of my experiences and evolution as both a person and an artist. It’s me expressing exactly how I feel, what I need, and how I want to be treated,” said Bernarr.
He added, “While narrating these stories, I wanted to incorporate the eras, genres, cultures, instruments, and music legends that inspire me.”
As part of the En Route rollout, and as long promised to fans—when the coins was right—Bernarr finally provided visuals to accompany his art.
Further, Bernarr is also a first-time Grammy nominee. His 2025 nomination differs from contributing to a Grammy-winning work like Kaytranada’s BUBBA, as he wasn’t officially credited as a nominee.
Kehlani is nominated for three Grammys this year, including two in the R&B field: Best R&B Song for “After Hours” and Best Progressive R&B Album for Crash. She is also nominated for Best Melodic Rap Performance for her appearance on Jordan Adetunji’s “KEHLANI.”
Kehlani’s nomination for Best Progressive R&B Album is significant, as this is their first time an album has been nominated in this category since its name revision in 2020 to become effective the following year, despite the release of their sophomore and third albums, It Wasn’t Good Until It Wasn’t (2020) and Blue Water Road (2022).
Previously, Kehlani’s mixtape, You Should Be Here, was nominated for Best Urban Contemporary Album at the 58th Grammy Awards in 2016, marking a historic first for mixtapes in R&B album categories.
Crash was released June 21 via Atlantic Records. Its “After Hours” grazed the top five on Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs chart and the top 30 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart.
Said about the album, Kehlani shared, “A crash, in any form, is the peak height of the moment. It isn’t the anxiety of the before, or the lament after. It is the ever so imperative present. A space with no reminisce, no remorse, and no afterthought. CRASH IS HERE. At my most free, most fun, most loud, most fueled, so far.”
As for Crash itself, which features Jill Scott, Omah Lay and Young Miko, it opened at No. 2 on the Top R&B Albums chart.
Like Bernarr, Avery*Sunshine’s August release, So Glad to Know You, strikes her first-ever career Grammy nomination.
She has been touted for consideration in previous years, including in 2022, for Four Songs & a Bootleg (Best R&B Album) and other R&B-centric categories for “Lucky,” the album’s lead single.
So Glad to Know You, which was produced in collaboration with Jamison Ross, and released independently on her imprint, BigShine Recordings, which she runs with her husband Dana Johnson.
Avery*Sunshine launched her new era in January with “Lifted Up” and subsequently released singles like “I Wonder” and “My Way.”
“The lyrics of ‘My Way’ are a manifesto of empowerment and renewal. It’s an uplifting ode to finding one’s path and the joy of steering life in the direction of one’s choosing,” Avery*Sunshine told Rated R&B.
Donald Glover, also known as Childish Gambino, returns to the Grammys after five years, with two new nominations, one of which is for Best Progressive R&B Album.
He previously won four out of five nominations at the 61st ceremony for “This Is America.”
Gambino’s Bando Stone & the New World is his first album nominated in the R&B genre since Awaken, My Love!, which received a Best Urban Contemporary Album nomination in 2018. This is also Gambino’s first project nominated since then.
In a conversation with The New York Times about his latest album, Glover expressed what success for him presently means.
“If people listen to this album, and it becomes a part of their identity, if they look back a year later and are reminded of how much they listened to it and what that felt like in the summer of ’24 — that kind of real estate is way more valuable to me [than chart metrics],” said Glover.
Hyped as his last Childish Gambino album, Bando Stone and the New World debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 with 36k copies sold in its first week, boosted by the lead single “Lithonia,” which has over 57.7 million Spotify streams.
Bando Stone and the New World includes features from Chlöe, Jorja Smith, Amaarae, Fousheé, Khruangbin and more.
With Why Lawd?, NxWorries, the genre-bending duo consisting of Anderson .Paak and producer Knxwledge, continue to prove that collaborative projects have a way with Recording Academy voters.
Since its name change at the 63rd Grammy Awards, eight collaborative projects—either albums or EPs—by various artists in duos or groups—have been nominated for Best Progressive R&B Album.
Here are all the duos and groups nominated for Best Progressive R&B Album since 2021:
- Chloe x Halle, Ungodly Hour (2021)
- Free Nationals, Free Nationals (2021)
- Hiatus Kaiyote, Mood Valiant (2022)
- Dinner Party (Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, 9th Wonder, Kamasi Washington), Dinner Party: Dessert (2022)
- Moonchild, Starfruit (2023)
- Tank and the Bangas, Red Balloon (2023)
- Terrace Martin and James Fauntleroy, Nova (2024)
- NxWorries (Anderson .Paak and Knxwledge), Why Lawd? (2025)
Anderson .Paak, while nominated in 2021 with The Free Nationals, is a first-time nominee as part of NxWorries.
The anticipation for NxWorries’ second album, Why Lawd?, began in late 2022 with the single “Where I Go” featuring H.E.R.
Throughout 2023 and into 2024, additional tracks, including “Daydreaming,” “86Sentra,” “FromHere” with Snoop Dogg and October London, and “WalkOnBy” featuring Earl Sweatshirt and Rae Khalil were released.
Why Lawd? was released in June and featured additional guests such as Thundercat, Charlie Wilson, and Dave Chapelle.
The 67th Grammy Awards will return to Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena on Feb. 2, 2025. See the additional nominees here.
