The Grammys Get the Message : Awards: Rap now has a healthy representation on the telecast. And heavy metal and hard rock are split into separate categories.

On Grammy day last year, Mike Greene, the president of the sponsoring National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, worked overtime defending the way the organization handled its first-ever rap category and apologizing for the way it awarded its first-ever heavy-metal/hard-rock trophy.

On one side he had a large portion of the rap community boycotting the show because the rap award was not part of the televised portion of the ceremonies and no rap performers were featured on the telecast.

On the other side he had a hard-rock community outraged that the award went not to the favored Metallica, who shook the Shrine Auditorium’s chandelier with a performance unlike anything ever seen or heard on a Grammy show, but to progressive-rock veteran Jethro Tull, which many felt didn’t even belong in the category.

But, tonight, when the Grammys are again handed out at the Shrine, it promises to be a different matter: The rappers are happy with the healthy representation the genre will have on the telecast. Heavy metal and hard rock have been split into separate categories, with no embarrassing nominees. And Greene expects to be able to spend his time and energy boasting of NARAS’ widening horizons and whipping up support for his campaign to fight legislation that would require many records to carry warning labels.

“I don’t think we’ll have any silly Grammys this year,” Greene predicted, acknowledging that the progress he’d hoped last year’s introduction of the rap and hard-rock awards would symbolize was undermined by the controversies surrounding them.

But looking back on his first Grammy event as NARAS president, the former musician, producer and studio operator sees the controversies as merely growing pains. He proudly notes that the people doing the complaining then are active academy insiders now.

“The academy has so long been looked at as an institutional stick-in-the-mud organization that people weren’t comfortable participating in,” he said. “Now we’ve broadened it so much that we really do have a lot of those people in, and it’s OK to be rebellious within the context of the academy. We can still have our big band and polka and Hispanic people right there alongside the bad boys and girls.”

In fact, Greene says, the Grammys’ missteps last year are directly responsible for speeding the expansion of the voting academy. Don Dokken, a heavy-metal singer who was in the Shrine audience last year, said he for one saw it as a call for action.

“When they opened the envelope and said Jethro Tull won, I was baffled,” Dokken said. So then and there he resolved to join NARAS. “After what happened to Metallica I said, ‘I gotta get in there. I want to put my two cents’ worth in.’ ”

This year Dokken himself is a heavy-metal nominee, but he expects to be able to celebrate the award no matter who wins.

“I think it was good what happened with Tull, because it made such a big ruckus the academy had to reassess the voting ways and get more attuned to what’s going on. It worked out for the best.”

Since Greene came on board as chairman in 1985, academy membership has grown from 5,000 to 8,000, with most of the new members drawn from the younger rock and pop worlds.

On the rap front, it’s smiles all around this year. Not only is the award to be given on the telecast, with rap act DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince scheduled to perform, but rap has crossed over to the general categories: in the best new artist field, Tone Loc is joined by the rap-influenced Neneh Cherry and Soul II Soul.

“I was ready to organize the second annual rappers boycott of the Grammy Awards,” said Bill Adler, publicist for rap-oriented Rush Management, which spearheaded last year’s boycott. “But the Grammys are going to accord us our due this year. We’re very pleased and cooperating with NARAS to the fullest.”

Adler seems willing to allow the Grammys to progress slowly, as long as it progresses. “It was Mike Greene who described the Grammys as an ocean liner, and to get it to change directions is an awfully big job. Truthfully, we never should have expected it to register the momentous changes in rock ‘n’ roll instantaneously. . . . I’ll be really happy when a rap artist takes a top award. When we see those nominations the Grammys will have finally caught up with reality.”

Again, Greene now views last year’s rap protest as healthy for the Grammys and for music. “I told Bill many times that had they not been passionately outraged I would have taken offense,” he said. “I would have been worried about their roles as responsible rappers and social critics for not pointing it out.”

In fact, it’s something Greene hopes will rub off on other NARAS members, whom he hopes to enlist in the fight against record labeling.

“I’m having a hard time getting industry and artist support on the issue,” he lamented. “The last thing I need to do is run around to state capitals.”

A TICKET TO GRAMMY

Brokers have some Grammy tickets but they’re kind of pricey. F12

3-Hour Grammy Telecast

CBS will televise “The Grammy Awards” in a three-hour telecast starting tonight at 8 on Channels 2 and 8. An hourlong preview co-hosted by Steve Kmetko and Dorothy Lucey will air at 7 p.m. on Channel 2.