The Recording Academy is in chaos. What does it mean for Sunday’s Grammy Awards?

Grammy grumbling is a time-honored tradition.

And with good reason. Sometimes, it seems, getting it wrong is the only thing the Grammys can do right.

Historical examples abound. Fifty years ago, Blood, Sweat & Tears’ self-titled second album beat the Beatles’ Abbey Road. In 1985, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, and Cyndi Lauper lost album of the year to Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down.

More recently, the Grammys — to be broadcast from the Staples Center in Los Angeles at 8 p.m. Sunday on CBS — have repeatedly failed to acknowledge excellence in hip-hop.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1999 and OutKast’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below in 2004 are the only rap records to win Album of the Year. Since 2014, deserved winner Kendrick Lamar has lost thrice, to Daft Punk, Taylor Swift, and Bruno Mars.

But compared to the mess that the Recording Academy finds itself in on the eve of this year’s ceremony, all previous Grammy troubles seem small.

On Jan. 16 — just 10 days before “Music’s Biggest Night,” with body-positive singer-rapper Lizzo and teen-goth pop star Billie Eilish as the leading nominees — Recording Academy president and CEO Deborah Dugan was ousted and put on administrative leave.

Since then, things have gotten crazy. Allegations have shot back and forth between the Academy and Dugan, former head of (Red), the charity founded by Bono of U2 to raise awareness of AIDS and HIV in Africa.

Six months ago, Dugan took over from Neil Portnow, the academy’s chief of 17 years. His days became numbered when he suggested during the 2018 telecast that the solution to Grammy gender inequity in the #MeToo era was for women to “step up.”

Dugan pledged to make the Grammys more diverse and reflective of popular taste, and this year’s nominees suggest she was making headway. There are eight best new artist nominees, for instance, and from Austin soul-funk duo Black Pumas to black British country-soul singer Yola, not a single white male is among them. (Eilish, who like Lizzo has eight total nominations, is the likely winner.)

Since her dismissal, Dugan has charged that the academy is “a boy’s club network where men work together to the disadvantage of women and disenfranchised groups in order to line their own pockets.”

Rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy supported her on Instagram: “I salute Debrah Dugan for her truth and courage to try and effect change. As always, a bunch of ignorant, testosterone-fueled, usually old white men stop progress and screw it up.”

The Academy has counterattacked, saying Dugan was removed after a female employee complained that she had been “abusive” and created a “toxic and intolerable” work environment. Billboard reported that Dugan requested a $22 million payout in exchange for leaving the nonprofit organization quietly.

On Tuesday, Dugan filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging she was sexually harassed by the Academy’s counsel, Joel Katz, and that after she took the job she learned that Portnow had been accused of rape by a “foreign recording artist.” Katz issued a statement denying Dugan’s charges, and Portnow has called the rape allegations “ludicrous and untrue.”

The imbroglio is not good for the Grammy brand. “Our loyalty will always be to the 21,000 members of the Recording Academy,” the organization said in a statement. “We regret that music’s biggest night is being stolen from them by Ms. Dugan’s actions.”

The bitter battle will ratchet up the tension surrounding Sunday night’s show.

The telecast aims to be a platform for the most exciting performers to showcase their stuff.

Alicia Keys is hosting. Big-name nominees like Lizzo, Eilish, Ariana Grande, and Lil Nas X — nominated for seven awards on the strength of his country-rap smash with Billy Ray Cyrus, “Old Town Road” — will be on display.

Philly rapper Meek Mill — in line for Best Rap Album for Championships — and John Legend will join in a tribute to L.A. rapper Nipsey Hussle, who was shot to death at age 33 last April and is up for three awards posthumously.

Country comeback queen Tanya Tucker, nominated for four awards, will perform. (However, Yola, also with four nods, has been relegated to the pre-telecast ceremony, during which the great majority of gramophones in 84 categories will be given out. It will be streamed on Grammy.com.)

MusicCares Person of the Year honors, given for charitable work, will go to Aerosmith. The band will perform without drummer Joey Cramer, who expressed unhappiness at his exclusion by suing his bandmates.

Bonnie Raitt will pay tribute to John Prine, a lifetime achievement honoree along with Chicago, Roberta Flack, Iggy Pop, Public Enemy, the late Isaac Hayes, and proto-rock guitar hero Sister Rosetta Tharpe (buried in Northwood Cemetery in Philadelphia).

But can the Grammys go smoothly while the award-giving body is in chaos? Aside from Chuck D, artists who stand to benefit from the Academy’s largesse — that is, any performer who wants to be on TV on Sunday — have been silent. Will they be able to hold their tongues, given the chance to speak out in front of a global audience?

Regardless, the Dugan drama is of real consequence for the Grammys’ credibility.

For years, it’s seemed obvious that the nominees in the four major categories — album, record, song (a songwriter’s award), new artist — are stage-managed. The selection process is notoriously opaque, fueling suspicions that behind-the-scenes machinations determine who’s up for the biggest prizes and career-boosting TV time.

Dugan’s EEOC complaint alleges a process “ripe with corruption,” with “secret committees” reviewing lists of 15 to 20 nominees before narrowing them to five or eight. She claims the committees have been made up of members of the Grammy board averaging “approximately 68% male and 69% Caucasian” since 2012, and that they have elevated performers to the final lists of nominees even though they didn’t get enough votes to make the top 20.

With all that micromanaging, how have the Grammys still managed to consistently incite fans to assail the Recording Academy as clueless?

Because it’s a two-step process. You can rig the nominations, but members still cast votes to determine a winner. Voters are industry careerists who tend to be older, and favor the familiar-sounding.

So you wind up with Beyonce’s boundary-pushing Lemonade losing to Adele’s middle-of-the-road 25 in 2017, and non-edgy Bruno Mars beating out Lamar, Childish Gambino, Jay-Z, and Lorde in 2018.

What does it all mean for Sunday night? Will the Grammys get it wrong again?

Past performance suggests yes, though how it will play out is hard to predict.

The out-of-the-blue success of “Old Town Road,” which exposed racial bias on the country charts and became the year’s ubiquitous hit, appears to be a can’t-miss record of the year.

Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts,” a smash even though it was originally released in 2017, seems poised to win song of the year on the strength of its catchy self-worth mantra: “I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100% that b----!”

And Eilish is the odds-on favorite for best new artist and album of the year. Her When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? is critically acclaimed and hugely popular, so it would be an upset if Grammy voters decide she’s too weird and instead give the honor to Lana Del Rey or Vampire Weekend. Which probably means that’s exactly what will happen.