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Kendrick Lamar · S6 E7
The Pulitzer Prize
April 16, 2018. For the first time in history, a rapper wins the Pulitzer Prize for Music
April 16, 2018. The Pulitzer Prize for Music goes to a rapper for the first time in the award's 101-year history.
Kendrick Lamar, Fan Interview (from Kendrick's official channel). Before the critics and the committees weighed in, the fans already knew. This is Kendrick hearing what his music means to the people who live with it every day.
DAMN., Kendrick Lamar (2017): The Album That Won the Pulitzer
The Pulitzer board described it as "a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism." In plain English: every track earns its place, the language is real, and the rhythm never lets up. What the committee recognized was what fans already felt: fourteen tracks that function as individual songs and as chapters in a single story. No rap album had ever been taken this seriously by the classical music establishment.
Sources
The Pulitzer Prize Board, official citation for DAMN., April 16, 2018
“A virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.”
— The Pulitzer Prize Board, official citation for DAMN., April 16, 2018
The Door Opens
Before DAMN., the Pulitzer Prize for Music had only gone to classical and jazz compositions. The committee didn't create a special category for hip-hop. They gave Kendrick the same award, under the same criteria, that they'd given to Wynton Marsalis and John Adams. Rap was always eligible. The committee just finally paid attention.
Sources
The Pulitzer Prizes, Music category history, pulitzer.org
Columbia University
The Pulitzer Prizes have been administered from this campus since 1917. On April 16, 2018, the committee announced that a kid from Compton had joined a list previously reserved for classical composers and jazz musicians.
TAP TO REVEAL: What was DAMN. competing against for the Pulitzer?
Before DAMN., what genres had won every Pulitzer Prize for Music in the award's history?
LUST., Kendrick Lamar (2017)
Track eight on DAMN. The song repeats the same verse twice with subtle variations, mirroring the cycles of desire and repetition it describes. This is the kind of structural ambition that caught the Pulitzer committee's attention: a pop song that functions as a formal experiment. Most listeners don't notice the repetition until the second time through.
LUST., Kendrick Lamar (2017)
Read the lyrics while you listen, and read them twice. The first and second halves mirror each other with small but significant changes in wording. Kendrick is showing you what lust does: the same cycle, slightly different each time, never actually going anywhere.
The Pulitzer
Kendrick has nothing left to prove. He disappears for five years, and when he finally returns, the first thing he does is put his own family on trial. Next season: The Silence.
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