Kendrick Lamar leads contenders for MTV's non-gendered VMAs

Kendrick Lamar's Humble is giving the rapper reason to brag: he is the leader heading into the MTV Video Music Awards with eight nominations.

Lamar and his hit song are nominated for video of the year, artist of the year, best hip-hop video and other categories.Katy Perry and Canadian hip-hop star The Weeknd are behind Lamar with five nominations.

Other Canuck nominees include pop starsAlessiaCara, Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber and rapper K'naan for his work on The Hamilton Mixtape.

The 2017 VMAs will air live Aug. 27 from the Forum in Inglewood, Calif.

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It's the first year the show has dropped their gender-basedvideo categories (e.g. best male video and best female video),opting instead for artist of the year. The VMAs' sister show, the MTV Movie & TV Awards, dropped the gendered categories earlier this year.

MTV has hinted it will adjust the broadcast, after traditional television ratings tanked in 2016:6.5 million people watched it on one of Viacom's 11 networks, compared to 9.8 million in 2015.

However, online streams of the 2016edition nearly quintupled. There were a predicted 149 million streams of VMA content on the day of broadcast and the following day, compared to 30.7 million on 2015. It seems the network has already taken that shift in how people are watching to heart:this year's nominees were announced via Instagram.

Other video of the year nominees includes Bruno Mars' 24K Magic,the Weeknd's Reminder,Cara's Scars to Your Beautifuland Wild Thoughts,the hit by DJ Khaled, Rihanna and Bryson Tiller released last month.

No Despacito

A surprise snub was Despacitoby Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee; the catchy tune's remix featuring Justin Bieber is considered by many to be the song of the summer. Another snub is Ed Sheeran's Shape of You.Both songs topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart this year.

Still, Sheeran will compete for artist of the year, along with Lamar, Mars, Ariana Grande, Lorde and the Weeknd.

Lamar's other nominations include best direction, art direction, choreography, cinematography and visual effects. Videos eligible for nomination had to be released between June 25, 2016 through June 23, 2017.

Other acts who scored Moonmen nominations include the Chainsmokers, Migos, Harry Styles, Selena Gomez, Fifth Harmony and Big Sean.