Kendrick Lamar is honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his record DAMN as first non-jazz or classical artist On Wednesday at New York City’s Columbia University.
“It’s an honour. Been writing my whole life, so to get this type of recognition, it’s beautiful”, said the singer after receiving the prize.
Defining the project as a “virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life”, Lee C. Bollinger, the President of Columbia University congratulate the hip-hop artist.
Apart from this his album DAMN won Best Rap Album and was nominated for Album of the Year at this year’s Grammy Awards.
Lamar’s Pulitzer has been celebrated as a vindication of hip-hop, and a particularly sweet one given that Damn features a pointed sample of Geraldo Rivera making the absurd claim that “hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years”.
It was the first time in 75 years where a non-classical or jazz musician wins the Pulitzer Prize since it’s first launching in 1943.
“The initial goal was to make a hybrid of my first two commercial albums,” said Lamar “that was our total focus, how to do that sonically, lyrically, through melody and it came out exactly how I heard it in my head”.
> Shatabdi Sarker Poushi
Kendrick Lamar Received Pulitzer Prize for Music Album ‘Damn’
