Exposure

Chris Dave, the drummer on Robert Glasper's genre-bending Black Radio (2012), also plays on 21 (2011), one of the best-selling pop albums of the 2010s — the same hands linking a neo-soul jazz session to a stadium-scale pop blockbuster.

Best New Artist is a pop category, and it usually goes to whoever stands at the front and sings. In 2011 it went to Esperanza Spalding, an upright bassist who sings while she plays, on the strength of Chamber Music Society (2010) — a record built around a string trio. She was the first jazz musician to win it.