Commercial and critical darling Kendrick Lamar wins Pulitzer for music
NEW YORK — Kendrick Lamar has won the Pulitzer Prize for music, making history as the first non-classical or jazz artist to win the prestigious prize.
The revered rapper is also the most commercially successful musician to receive the award, usually reserved for critically acclaimed classical acts who don’t live on the pop charts.
The 30-year-old won the prize for “Damn.,” his raw and powerful Grammy-winning album. The Pulitzer board said Monday the album is a “virtuosic song collection” and said it captures “the modern African-American life.” He will win $15,000.
Lamar has been lauded for his deep lyrical content, politically charged live performances, and his profound mix of hip-hop, spoken word, jazz, soul, funk, poetry and African sounds. Since emerging on the music scene with the 2011 album “Section.80,” he has achieved the perfect mix of commercial appeal and critical respect.
The Pulitzer board has awarded special honors to Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Hank Williams, but a popular figure such as Lamar has never won the prize for music. In 1997, Wynton Marsalis became the first jazz act to win the Pulitzer Prize for music.
That makes Lamar’s win that much more important: His platinum-selling majorlabel albums — “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” “To Pimp a Butterfly” and “Damn.” — became works of art, with Lamar writing songs about blackness, street life, police brutality, perseverance, survival and self-worth.