If there’s one nugget of controversy that has come to haunt the 2014 Grammys above anything else, it’s that Macklemore won best album over Kendrick Lamar.

There are few hip-hop fans who could possibly doubt that Lamar’s outstanding Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City was a superior album than Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s poppy The Heist, but that didn’t stop the Grammy from going to the latter. It’s an action that has unsurprisingly set the rap world on fire, and even though Macklemore responded quickly with an apology to Kendrick, it’s brought up questions not only about race, but of hip-hop’s worth in the Grammys overall.

Now, after a couple of days of cooling off, Kendrick has responded to the controversy directly, and is surprisingly sober about the events and subsequent reaction. He told XXL, “It’s well deserved; he did what he did, man. He went out there and hustled and grinded. Everything happens for a reason; the universe comes back around, that’s how it go.”

Lamar went on to talk about how hip-hop is perceived, saying “We part of the world. We part of the movement. So I think any awards, including the Grammys, should always push for more hip-hop because it’s music as a whole, it’s not just splitting different regions. Everything moves as far as sound and vibrations, and that’s how it goes. And we are a part of that.” [via AllHipHop]