GRAMMYS GONNA GRAMMY: MUSIC'S MOST BEWILDERING NIGHT

When Steely Dan was nominated for Album of the Year in 2000 for its LP Two Against Nature, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker weren't strangers to the Grammys, but they weren't exactly Recording Academy darlings, either.

They'd received just one AOTY nom from their string of near-perfect 1970s LPs (Aja lost out to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours in 1977) and then lost in that category again in 1981, when Gaucho was topped by John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy.

Two Against Nature, their first album in 20 years, did respectably well on the charts and with critics as the band's cynical-yet-smooth approach still resonated with baby boomers. Steely Dan may now be seen as timeless, but at the 2001 Grammys, it was clearly not of the time; its competition for AOTY included three era-defining albums—Beck's Midnite Vultures, Radiohead's Kid A and Eminem's transgressive juggernaut, The Marshall Mathers LP—plus Paul Simon's You're the One.

Earlier that evening, Em had been joined by Elton John for an indelible Grammy performance of "Stan" and had won three trophies in rap categories. It felt like AOTY was his to lose. So at the end of the night, when Bette Midler and Stevie Wonder announced that Two Against Nature had in fact earned Album of the Year, it wasn't that Steely Dan wasn't worthy of such an honor, but rather that, in typical Grammy fashion, the award came some two decades too late.

"They gave us plenty of time to work on our speeches," Fagen cracked backstage. For hip-hop artists and fans, getting snubbed for AOTY would be something they'd need to get used to.