Candiace left Potomac and went straight for the Recording Academy — her Tamar Braxton duet is in the Grammy race, and nobody’s reporting it.
Candiace Dillard Bassett spent six seasons of The Real Housewives of Potomac insisting the music was the main event. This month she put her money where her mouth is — quietly, on her own Instagram, with no entertainment outlet picking it up. On October 6, she announced she is officially in the Grammy race.
“For Your Consideration”
“For your GRAMMY® consideration,” her October 6 post reads, submitting “If Only…” — her duet with Tamar Braxton — for Best R&B Collaboration or Duo/Group Performance and Best R&B Song. “To my voting Recording Academy peers, thank you for listening and considering our work,” she wrote. That’s the tell: this is a for-your-consideration campaign, the formal first lap of awards season, not a nomination — those are still to come, and FYC pushes are how records get in front of the voters who decide them. She doubled down on October 15 with a carousel of live performances of the song, the FYC card attached again.
The push isn’t happening in a vacuum. On October 9 she dropped “Pretty Ain’t Perfect — The Sound Pack,” selling the song in original, instrumental and acapella versions, and on October 12 she posted that Spotify had added “Pretty Ain’t Perfect” to its R&B Weekly and Queen playlists. And per her comments to The Reality Rundown at the VRT Awards, there is more coming: an all-original Christmas album she describes as “sexy,” “R&B” and “vibey,” plus a full new R&B album next year.
The Part Nobody Covered
Here’s the context that makes this a story and not just a post. The song itself got real coverage when it moved earlier this year — People ran an exclusive on the “If Only…” remixes, and ET sat her down about her post-Housewives music era. Braxton is a Grammy winner; a duet with her is a legitimate vehicle, not a vanity record. But the October campaign — the actual awards run, the sound pack, the playlist adds, the Christmas album reveal — has drawn, in our checks, no People, no E! News, no Page Six, no Us Weekly and no Bravo Daily Dish coverage at all. The last time a search turns up press on a Candiace Grammy campaign, it’s a ScreenRant piece — from 2021, about a different record.
She’s also doing it as a free agent. Since leaving Potomac, she’s stacked The Traitors, a Hulu podcast (Get Real), a Howard homecoming hosting slot and now an awards-season run — a second act built entirely outside the franchise that made her famous.
The 247 Take — Housewives release music all the time; almost none of them run an actual Grammy campaign with a Grammy winner on the record and playlist support behind it. Candiace told us for six years she was a singer who happened to be on a reality show. This fall, with nobody watching, she’s finally just the singer.
Who Knew? Good luck Candiace…
More reality TV news at CelebnMusic247.com.
Sources: Instagram — FYC announcement | Instagram — Sound Pack | Instagram — Spotify playlists | Instagram — Live performances
