Thirty-year old Compton raised rapper, Kendrick Lamar, has won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his album, DAMN. He is the first ever non-classical or jazz artist to receive this honorable award. The Pulitzer board describes DAMN. as “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.”
DAMN. is Lamar’s fourth studio record and was released on April 14, 2017. All fourteen tracks on DAMN. hit the Billboard Hot 100, making him only the fifth artist to do so concurrently, per music blogs such as SoundMoz Blog. Later in 2015, Billboard also named Lamar as one of the “10 Best Rappers of All Time”. Some of the others among that list include: Meek Mill, Big Sean, Young Thug, A$AP Rocky, and Future.
With 12 Grammy Awards, two civic honors, including the California State Senate’s Generational Icon Award and presentation of the key to the city from Compton Mayor, Aja Brown, Lamar is no stranger to awards. I hope he has room on the shelf for one more. He has come a long way since the mixtape he released as a teenager under the name K-Dot, and we hope to see a lot more. Congrats, Kendrick!