Chappell Roan claps back at Jeff Rabhan’s criticism of her Grammys acceptance speech

The Best New Artist winner fires back at Rabhan’s Hollywood Reporter article, with a $25K donation challenge.

Chappell Roan is not backing down after former music executive Jeff Rabhan criticized her 2025 Grammys acceptance speech in The Hollywood Reporter.

Rabhan’s article, "Chappell Groan: The Misguided Rhetoric of an Instant Industry Insider," dismissed Roan’s call for record labels to provide artists with healthcare benefits and fair wages, labeling her remarks as “hackneyed and plagiarized.”

Roan, who won Best New Artist, used her speech to highlight financial struggles faced by many musicians, urging the industry to do better. Rabhan argued that her perspective was naive, stating she was “basking in industry love while taking aim at the very machine that got her there.”

In response, Roan took to Instagram Stories with a screenshot of the article and a direct challenge to Rabhan: “@jeffrabhan wanna match me $25K to donate to struggling dropped artists?” She followed up with another message: “Mr. Rabhan, I love how in the article you said ‘put your money where your mouth is' Genius!!! Let’s link and build together and see if you can do the same.”

Photo: Instagram/@chappellroan

Roan then used her platform to uplift other artists, posting another story highlighting musicians such as Sarah Kinsley, hemlocke springs, Devon Again and Baby Storme, who she believes "deserve more love and a bigger platform.”

Earlier, fellow musician Halsey came to Roan's defense, slamming Rabhan’s piece as a “ranting, seething tantrum” full of “assumptions and accusations that generalize the experience of every artist to that of the most successful.”