This year, the Grammy Awards have nominated many talented and deserving artists, across all music genres. The nominees in each of the five R&B categories, along with the artists that Geeks of Color predicts will claim each award, are listed below. Do you agree with our choices? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

Best R&B Performance:

• “Get You” — Daniel Caesar Featuring Kali Uchis
• “Distraction” — Kehlani
• “High” — Ledisi
• “That’s What I Like” — Bruno Mars
• “The Weekend” — SZA (Winner)

SZA is nominated in each of the five R&B categories. It’s obvious that the Recording Academy has noticed her work over the past year. Of the five nominations, we feel that this is the award that she’s most likely to win.

Best Traditional R&B Performance:

• “Laugh And Move On” — The Baylor Project (Winner)
• “Redbone” — Childish Gambino
• “What I’m Feelin’” — Anthony Hamilton Featuring The Hamiltones
• “All The Way” — Ledisi
• “Still” — Mali Music

How incredible was the video for “Laugh And Move On”? Its black and white visuals, along with its star artists, were a glamorous masterpiece. This is as traditional as modern R&B gets.

Best R&B Song:

• “First Began” — PJ Morton, songwriter (PJ Morton)
• “Location” — Alfredo Gonzalez, Olatunji Ige, Samuel David Jiminez, Christopher McClenney, Khalid Robinson & Joshua Scruggs, songwriters (Khalid)
• “Redbone” — Donald Glover & Ludwig Goransson, songwriters (Winner)
• “Supermodel” — Tyran Donaldson, Terrence Henderson, Greg Landfair Jr., Solana Rowe & Pharrell Williams, songwriters (SZA)
• “That’s What I Like” — Christopher Brody Brown, James Fauntleroy, Philip Lawrence, Bruno Mars, Ray Charles McCullough II, Jeremy Reeves, Ray Romulus & Jonathan Yip, songwriters (Bruno Mars)

Redbone is likely to get its props in this category. The moment that it was released, this song hit the stratosphere, as listeners loved its soothing and nostalgic notes.

Best Urban Contemporary Album:

• Free 6LACK — 6LACK
• “Awaken, My Love!” — Childish Gambino
• American Teen — Khalid
• Ctrl — SZA
• Starboy — The Weeknd (Winner)

The Weeknd is crushing the game with his Starboy album. He’s released five singles for the album so far, all of them capturing varying spaces in the Billboard Top 100. No other album in this category has had more overall impact on the charts.

Best R&B Album:

• Freudian — Daniel Caesar
• Let Love Rule — Ledisi
• 24K Magic — Bruno Mars (Winner)
• Gumbo — PJ Morton
• Feel The Real –Musiq Soulchild

Although we’d be happy to see Toronto newcomer Daniel Caesar win this one, pop superstar Bruno Mars will likely take home the Grammy award for Best R&B Album. His massive popularity, along with the excellent chart performance of 24K Magic (five charted singles and additional remixes) is probably too great to deny him.

James Corden, known for his popular television show and viral Carpool Karaoke series, will host this year’s award show, for his second time. It will be broadcast live on CBS on Sunday, January 28 at 7:30 PM ET/4:30 PM PT. For viewers with participating cable providers, the show will be available to stream online, via CBS All Access.

Published by Brian Bernard

I'm a hardcore tech geek that works for one of Canada's largest software companies. I have a passion for cultivating and publicizing the diversity in geek culture. Most of my days are spent in the tech world, analyzing data, troubleshooting app/server issues, designing/illustrating and writing code. Ball is life and the Lakers will rise again (don't @ me). Passing me the AUX cord is like passing Picasso a paintbrush. Just so you know, I'm your music plug's plug. One part geek, one part jock, six parts One Punch Man. View all posts by Brian Bernard