The Score | Rapper Kendrick Lamar Wins Pulitzer Prize in Music

In April, rapper Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his 2017 album DAMN., becoming the first non-classical or non-jazz artist to win the category since it was established in 1943. Lamar was the unanimous choice of a five-person jury: critic and Columbia University journalism professor David Hajdu; composer David Lang; Paul Cremo, director of the Metropolitan Opera’s commissioning program; Farah Jasmine Griffin, a professor of English and African-American studies at Columbia University; and violinist Regina Carter. The announcement sparked fierce debates and a flurry of post-Pulitzer media coverage that included a Billboard interview with Pulitzer Prize Administrator Dana Canedy—who oversees the process but does not vote—explaining how the jury came to its decision. The two other finalists were Quartet by Michael Gilbertson and Sound from the Bench by composer Ted Hearne, who described Lamar as “one of the greatest living American composers.” Last year’s Pulitzer Prize in Music went to Du Yun for her opera Angel’s Bone. That first music Pulitzer, in 1943? To William Schuman for Secular Cantata No. 2: A Free Song.