Excuse me if I’m not rushing the work on my unfinished time machine so I can fast forward to Sunday night’s always dreadful and always boring, Grammys telecast.

Just when I thought the Grammys couldn’t get any worse, I have to stomach Katy Perry’s name even being mentioned in the same breath as album of the year.

The only reason I’ll be tuning in — and by tuning in, I mean DVRing it and fast forwarding through all but 10 minutes of the show — on Sunday is to see if this will finally be the year Eminem will win the top award (And I’m interesting in seeing his, as well as B.o.B.’s, performances.)

For the third time of his career, Eminem is nominated for album of the year for his release of Recovery, which as the four readers of this blog already know, yours truly labeled the best album of 2010.

But I’m no scallywag. I know better. And as I predicted correctly in 2009 when Lil Wayne sold a billion copies of Tha Carter III and was the most popular person on the planet, voters no lika da rap music.

Only once in the show’s history has a rap album won album of the year and that came in 2004 when Outkast took home the top award for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. But let’s be real earnest with ourselves, Outkast are from a different planet. Their material has so many other genres of music plugged into their albums including R&B, Jazz, Funk, Rock, among others. Remember “Hey Ya!”? Yeah, my grandmother likes that song.

Since 1991, only 11 rap albums have been nominated for best album of the year. And leave it to the Grammys to nominate none other than MC Hammer’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt Em album in 1991.

I’m not kidding, look it up. I don’t think I have to tell you that that one didn’t win.

These are the type of clowns we’re dealing with when talkin Grammys.

Anyway, although Eminem far and away deserves to win the top award of the night, I don’t think it will happen. The only reason it may happen this year, as opposed to the other years that he was nominated for best album (not since 2003) is he is now not just a hip-hop heavy-weight, but a pop culture icon who had a great success story in the early 2000s, fell off for years and came back with arguably the best album of the year. Voters do love a good comeback story, a tale of redemption. He probably didn’t get much respect in 2001 and 2003 when he was nominated because he was still considered a new kid on the block and possibly, just a flash in the pan.

If I were a betting man, which I’m clearly not as I still haven’t recovered from a Las Vegas trip I took 10 months ago (well, I guess that would make me a betting man, just not a good one,) I’d honestly say the award for album of the year will either go to The Arcade Fire for The Suburbs or Lady Antebellum for Need You Now.

I say this not because I think those two had the best albums of the year (because, they didn’t, nor do I like either one) but rather, The Grammys always go with a safe bet. And what’s more safe than a country rock band or an indie rock band.

Hey, if The Arcade Fire win, it’s a win for Canada, a win for the indie rock scene and a win for the underdog. If Lady Antebellum win, it’d be the fourth country affiliated album to win best album of the year in the past five years.

I have a better chance of winning than Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, is still, well, Lady Gaga.

If either of those two win, I’ll be using my time machine to fast forward to my funeral.

By Nick Carrabine
NCarrabine@News-Herald.com