Lamar wins Pulitzer for music

Fiction prize goes to ‘Less’

NEW YORK, April 17, (Agencies): Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for music Monday, 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 unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of 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 like 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 major-label albums — “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” “… a Butterfly” and “DAMN.” — became works of art, with Lamar writing songs about blackness, street life, police brutality, perseverance, survival and self-worth. His piercing and sharp raps helped him become the voice of the generation, and easily ascend as the leader in hip-hop and cross over to audiences outside of rap, from rock to pop to jazz. He’s also been a dominator on the charts, having achieved two dozen Top 40 hits, including a No. 1 success with “Humble,” and he has even collaborated with the likes of U2, Taylor Swift, Imagine Dragons, Rihanna and Beyonce.

His music, with songs like “Alright” and “The Blacker the Berry,” have become anthems in the wake of high-profile police shootings of minorities as the conversation about race relations dominates news headlines. He brought of dose of seriousness to the 2015 BET Awards, rapping on top of a police car with a large American flag waving behind him. At the 2016 Grammys, during his visual-stunning, show-stopping performance, he appeared beaten, in handcuffs, with chains around his hands and bruises on his eyes as he delivered powerful lyrics to the audience.

Success

Lamar’s musical success helped him win 12 Grammy Awards, though all three of his major-label albums have lost in the top category — album of the year. Each loss has been criticized by the music community, launching the conversation about how the Recording Academy might be out of touch. “DAMN.” lost album of the year to Bruno Mars’ “24K Magic” in January.

The rapper, born in Compton, California, was handpicked by “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler to curate an album to accompany the ubiquitously successful film, giving Lamar yet again another No. 1 effort and highly praised project.

“DAMN.,” released on April 14, 2017, won five Grammys, including best rap album, and the album topped several year-end lists by critics, including NPR, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, BBC News, Complex and Vulture.

Finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in music were Michael Gilbertson’s “Quartet,” which debuted last February at Carnegie Hall, and Ted Hearne’s “Sound from the Bench,” a 35-minute cantata released last March.

Du Yun, who won the music Pulitzer last year for her opera “Angel’s Bone,” said she was thrilled about Lamar’s win.

“‘… a Butterfly’ got my blood pumping and the video for ‘DNA.’ made me want to make the music I’m making now,” she wrote in a statement. “Freedom of expression is the height of art, and Kendrick Lamar is the embodiment of that freedom.”

The drama prize went to Martyna Majok “Cost of Living,” a drama featuring four characters, two of them disabled. Carolyn Fraser’s work on author Laura Ingalls Wilder, “Prairie Fires,” won for biography. Jack E. Davis’ “The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea” won for history, while the general nonfiction prize went to James Forman Jr’s “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.”

Frank Bidart’s “Half-Light: Collected Poems 19652016,” winner of a National Book Award last fall, received the Pulitzer for poetry. Bidart, who turns 80 next month, is one of the country’s most acclaimed poets. His previous works include “Desire” and Star Dust.”

Lamar hardly needed the help, but Pulitzers often boost sales for winning authors, playwrights and musicians and ensure attention for future works. They can serve as the summation of a long career, such as Bidart’s, or help establish a younger artist.

The Pulitzers judges wrote that Forman’s work draws on “vast experience and deep knowledge of the legal system, and its often-devastating consequences for citizens and communities of color.” Forman told The Associated Press on Monday that he felt there was a “complexity in the African-American experience that wasn’t being represented in the literature.

“On many topics, black voices are either relegated to the sidelines or there’s a single character who is called to stand in for the black view,” he said.

Fraser told the AP that she had written about Wilder in the past and has been a fan of her books since she was a girl growing up on Mercer Island, just outside Seattle. She also acknowledged criticism of how American Indians have been portrayed in Wilder’s “Little House On the Prairie” novels.

“To be sure, she repeats various slurs. For starters, there’s the infamous, ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian,’” she said Monday. “’Little House on the Prairie,’ in particular, is a very complex work in that regard and I think it tells us a lot about ourselves — if we came from white settlement, if we live in the West, if we have ties to that past. I think it remains a really important work in terms of telling us who we were.”

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