On Tuesday, Kendrick Lamar won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for music for his album "DAMN.". Lamar receiving accolades for his work may not be something incredibly new. From the Grammys to the MTV music awards, he's received many awards for his work. But the 2018 Pulitzer Prize is different. Previous Pulitzer Prizes for music have only been awarded to jazz or classical pieces of music since the award's inception in 1943. That itself is hard to comprehend. Not a single rock, pop, hip-hop, metal, country, etc. artist has won the award until now.
Rap/Hip Hop is also a genre that has fought for credibility for years. It wasn't until 1996 that a "Best Rap Album" category was created at the Grammys, despite the genre existing for years before then. It wasn't until less than 20 years ago in 1999 that a rap/hip-hop album won "Best Album" at the Grammys with "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill."
The Pulitzer Prize Board giving the win to Kendrick Lamar's "DAMN." is obviously huge for Kendrick, but it could be even bigger for the genre as a whole. Hip-hop is at its absolute peak right now, as 25% of music consumption in the U.S. in 2017 came from the R&B/Hip-hop genre. Getting award-winning recognition like a Pulitzer could propel the genre past it's already commercially successful and culture-changing moment right now.
Hip-hop has also been a genre that is often criticized for its content, usually for being vulgar or violent. Having an artist like Kendrick who raps about interesting topics and political issues enough to be able to catch the Pulitzer Board's attention can start to change how the genre is seen by many people, especially older generations.
The award is also representative of a huge cultural shift that is currently. Hip-hop, as I stated before, accounted for 25% of music consumption. 2017 was the first year since Nielsen recorded data on music consumption that rock was not the most consumed genre, with rock coming in at second place at 20%.
With the changing landscape in terms of how people get their music (going from physical albums to digital albums, to what now seems to be streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify), the type of music that really resounds with people will also change.
Overall, the Pulitzer is a huge win for Kendrick himself, but it's a larger win for the genre of hip-hop and certainly signifies a change in the musical hierarchy to some degree. The statistics of the music people are listening to certainly backs that position up as well. Hip-hop is here to stay on top, and with innovative voices like Kendrick's, it may be there for a while.
