Kendrick Lamar wins the Pulitzer Prize for Music for 'DAMN.'
The Pulitzer board announces that Kendrick Lamar's *DAMN.* has won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music — the first non-classical and non-jazz work ever to win the award since the category was created in 1943. The citation calls the album 'a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.'
Why it matters
The Pulitzer for *DAMN.* is the moment American institutional culture credentials hip-hop as serious art on the same axis as Wynton Marsalis (1997 Pulitzer for *Blood on the Fields*) or Caroline Shaw. The downstream effects ripple immediately: university music departments expand hip-hop offerings, the Smithsonian accelerates its *Hip-Hop (R)Evolutions* programming, and the broader 'is hip-hop literature' question — argued out for decades — is decisively decided in the affirmative by the country's highest cultural-prize jury.
Branches
Citations 2
- A
- B