The BRIT Awards update categories and announce new R&B genre award

The BRIT Awards have announced a new addition to the genre awards categories, which were first introduced in 2022. In 2024, R&B will be one of five genre awards, along with Alternative/Rock, Dance, Pop and Hip Hop/Grime/Rap, ensuring visibility for UK R&B artists at The BRIT Awards, with the five genre awards collectively showcasing the creativity and diverse musical styles of British music. Eligibility for the R&B Award will cover a 24-month period as opposed to the usual 12 months to ensure that artists that released music in those two years qualify and are eligible.

YolanDa Brown OBE DL, BPI Chair, said: “British music is special, the secret ingredient is its rich diversity of genre bending sounds created by the most eclectic artists of all backgrounds. It was this that prompted The BRIT Awards to introduce genre-based awards in 2022, and we are delighted to continue this with the addition of a new standalone R&B category to join the four other genres that we will celebrate in 2024. Our best wishes to all the artists who are eligible.”

For 2024, The BRITs will also increase the number of nominees for both Artist of the Year and International Artist of the Year from five, to ten. This change, aimed at improving representation and inclusion, along with the introduction of the new R&B award, follows extensive consultation within the BRITs organisation, relevant industry and Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) groups.

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The BRIT Awards reveals the design of the 2024 BRIT Award, along with the identity of the artist behind the new creative – highly acclaimed British visual artist Rachel Jones. She completed her BA Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art in 2013 and an MA Fine Art at the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 2019. She was included in Mixing It Up: Painting Today at the Hayward Gallery, London (2021), and also has work housed in prominent institutional collections including those of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Long Museum, Shanghai; The Arts Council England; and the Tate, where her piece 'lick your teeth, they so clutch' (2021) is currently on display as part of the Tate Britain's rehang.

On being asked to design the 2024 BRIT trophy, Jones said, “There’s such a major legacy around the position of being asked to design the award, so it was a huge honour to be chosen for this year. Designing the award is especially exciting because people will be able to see my interest in working with other mediums. I don’t want to be known as just a ‘painter’, and having collaborated recently with a composer and a poet on my opera [Joseph Howard and Victoria Adukwei for Hey, Maudie], I'm finally starting to enter different spaces and develop new perspectives on my work. It’s really incredible that this is part of that journey.”

Rachel Jones joins an illustrious list of British artists and creative powerhouses who for over ten years have been giving the BRIT awards status a different look and makeover; from Dame Vivienne Westood, Tracey Emin, Pam Hogg to Sir Phillip Treacy, Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor. She inherits the honour from 2023 trophy designer Slawn.