This is certainly high praise for an artist whose work has been nominated for Album of the Year–the most prestigious Grammy award–but has lost three times. The Pulitzer Prize validated both Lamar’s work and hip-hop as a viable musical genre worthy of critical attention. However, if the selection committee truly valued his “vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism,” they would have granted him the Pulitzer for Literature instead of Music.
In 1943, the Pulitzer Prize first began including music. For over five decades, it went to classical musicians until 1997 when Wynton Marsalis became the first winner for his jazz album Blood on the Fields. Before then, jazz was not considered an important genre for the award. With Lamar’s win, the committee never considered rap or hip-hop until this year.
Of course, this is an important milestone not just Lamar himself, but for hip-hop music as a genre. Over the past year, hip-hop has been accepted by culturally high-brow institutions that have historically omitted this genre of creative expression.
Therein lies the problem: the committee realized the viability of hip-hop music only after it became influential in other genres. It had to first prove itself vis-à-vis established forms to be taken seriously. The committee decided to go to the source music this year, instead of choosing works with mere “influence.”
The same criteria applies to Lamar. Hip-hip is the soundtrack to the Black Lives Matter movement, with Kendrick Lamar as the resounding voice because of his unapologetic embrace of blackness and powerful criticisms of the mistreatment of African-Americans.
Dylan, like Lamar, was the voice of his generation, but received an elevation that eluded Lamar even though both musicians have “lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”
In fact, Lamar’s lyrics are excellent for teaching students rhyme scheme, imagery, metaphor, repetition, alliteration, and hyperbole – literary devices that any good poet would take seriously. By not giving him this consideration, the Pulitzer Prize Committee is stillrelegating hip-hop to a subpar art form not worthy of serious literary consideration.
If they truly valued hip-hop as poetry, then the Pulitzer Prize Committee would have praised his work as this high art form. Instead, they gave Lamar the award for music, essentially saying this is good, but it is not quite the poetry of Keats, Shakespeare, Wordsworth or Dylan.
Nevertheless, congratulations to Kendrick Lamar for bringing more exposure to the power and relevancy of hip-hop. His words so moved the Pulitzer Prize committee to garner such a high distinction, and he is the first hip-hop artist to do so. However, until we see hip-hop celebrated as a form of poetry in high-brow institutions, then Americawill never be a reflection of me.
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Dr. Donavan Ramon is a professor at Kentucky State University. A scholar of African American literature, he focuses on fatherhood.