MTV announces Video Music Awards nominations

Kendrick Lamar leads the way with eight nominations including video of the year where he is up against Bruno Mars and The Weeknd.

MTV has scrapped the gender categories of best female video and best male video as it announced nominations for this year’s VMAs.

Those two categories will be replaced by a more general award – artist of the year.

Rapper Kendrick Lamar leads the way in the 2017 Video Music Awards with an overall tally of eight nominations, including the artist category as well as video of the year for HUMBLE.

HUMBLE. is up against Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic, Scars to the Beautiful by Alessia Cara, Wild Thoughts by DJ Khaled ft. Rihanna and Bryson Tiller, and The Weeknd’s Reminder.

HUMBLE. also earned Lamar a spot in most of the technical categories, including best cinematography, direction, art direction and visual effects.

This is the first year MTV introduced gender neutral categories, allowing male and female performers to go head to head for artist of the year, and follows in the footsteps of the MTV Movie Awards.

In the artist category are Lamar, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd and Lorde.

Sheeran is also nominated for best pop for Shape Of You and best cinematography for Castle On The Hill.

MTV has also introduced a new category titled best fight against the system, for which Alessia Cara and Big Sean have been nominated among others, in a push to award activist music.

For best collaboration, DJ Khaled, Rihanna and Bryson Tiller got a nod for Wild Thoughts, going up against, among others, Charlie Puth and Selena Gomez’ We Don’t Talk Anymore and the super collaboration between Calvin Harris, Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry and Big Sean in Feels.

Winners in major categories are determined by voting by fans and the ceremony will be broadcast from Los Angeles on 27 August.

news.sky.om