Another change in how voting works comes with the addition of nominations review committees, with one being added for the 2018 awards to the rap nominations, along with a few other, less notable categories. These committees, started in 1989 (you know, after Lionel Richie beat Bruce Springsteen's Born In the USA and Prince's Purple Rain out for AOTY and the world lost its mind over those grave injustices), were put in place as "an additional round of checks and balances to eliminate the potential for a popularity bias that puts emerging artists, independent music, and late-year releases at a disadvantage," per the Academy . But a close reading of insider commentary indicates that what they do is review the votes of the 13,000 people in the voting body and then correct it when they go astray. Anyone with creative or technical credits on at least six tracks can join the voting body (which means if you wrote the liner notes for six albums or A&R six singles, you can vote without playing a note of music), while musicians have to have released an album in the last five years to be a voter in good standing. If you've won a Grammy in the past, in any category, you are a lifetime voter.