The reason that the White Stripes are nominated and inducted so soon (first eligible in 2023 and inducted in 2025)
1. Jack White is well beloved, respected and connected figure in music industry.
2. The White Stripes have one mega song "Seven Nation Army", probably one of the last huge rock songs. Jimmy Jam nominated them, but I think he only knew one of WS songs...
The Strokes are as deserving as White Stripes, but unfortunately, these two may be the reason that WS was pushed soon, but Strokes may wait.
Also, feel from the tone of John Sykes, seems that he is indifferent about the Strokes, "they are important, but..." When he said something like this, I won't expect their nomination will happen very soon.
And if they are not instantly pushed, they will wait their name to be called in that 90/00s modern rock lines, after Oasis included, still can have Alice in Chains, Coldplay, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Linkin Park and some others stand in the line as well, and then the Strokes may have to wait several more years.
The Strokes' new singles are terrible. The auto tune vocals make decent songs headache inducing. It is shockingly bad. They have lost the plot. They still have a shot at being nominated, but really, this was a huge miss.
Wasn't the original iteration of "Musical Excellence" ie. Sideman made for people like Sheena Easton? Maybe she doesn't have enough for Performer, but wouldn't it be nice if ME was used for its original purpose rather than…course correcting multiple nomination failures/skipping main category nominations????
Regardless, you need to remember that coolness/acclaim is the only influential factor in the chances of rap acts being voted in, probably contemporary R&B acts as well, popularity doesn't matter much.
There is a reason why Public Enemy were voted in easily in their first eligible year (not only by Black voters, lots of rock voters also voted for PE), while LL Cool J struggled for six times. PE sold way less than LL, but no one cares.
And it was right to put LL in the side category in 2021, because if you nominated LL along with every rap winner on the 2022–2026 ballots (Eminem, Missy Elliott, A Tribe Called Quest, Outkast, Wu-Tang Clan), LL could still lose to "far less commercial acts" like Tribe and Wu. And even when LL was nominated as the lone rap act on the ballot, he may still repeated the story of the 2018/2019 ballots (also the lone rap act and still failed) again and again, and probably was never going to be voted in.
After that, rock hall realized that hip hop acts with popularity but without acclaim/coolness would not get the votes to be included. Then they just had to side-door "famous names" like Salt-N-Pepa and Queen Latifah, because these two would be a waste of ballot spots, they would not get enough votes from the general voters.
ChrisD wrote: