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The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced Tuesday that rapper Tupac Shakur, who died twenty years ago, was among the 19 acts nominated for their 2017 honors. Billboard describes the list of this year's first-time nominees, which also includes Pearl Jam, Depeche Mode, Jane's Addiction and Joan Baez, among others, as "a mix of alt-rock superstars, a hip-hop legend, one of the most pioneering punk bands of the 1980s and a folk icon." This year's second-time nominees include Janet Jackson, Kraftwerk, The Cars, The Zombies, MC5 and Chaka Khan. The nominees were announced live this morning during SiriusXM's new all music talk channel Volume. See the full list here.
This was Shakur's first year of eligibility for the honor, as the museum requires at least 25 years to have passed since the release of an artist's first commercially available record. If his name is approved, Shakur will be the sixth hip-hop artist inducted into the hall of fame, according to NPR.
Here's the rundown of what comes next in the process, per Billboard:
Ballots will soon be sent out to an international voting body of more than 800 artists, historians and members of the music industry, who will narrow the list down to the final five inductees based on a variety of factors, including an artist’s "musical influence on other artists, length and depth of career and the body of work, innovation and superiority in style and technique." The final list of inductees will be announced in December, with the ceremony slated for New York's Barclay's Center in April 2017.
Fans can also vote for their favorite choices here. Voting is capped at one ballot per day.
N.W.A, Steve Miller, Cheap Trick, Chicago and Deep Purple were among those honored last year.
Here's some of the jams from the first-time nominees. Congratulations!
