Kendrick Lamar

Jon Sterngass

Description

Kendrick Lamar discovered he had a knack for storytelling while growing up on the rough streets of Compton, CA, during the 1990s. At the age of 16, he made a mixtape that caught the attention of independent record label Top Dawg Entertainment, kickstarting a career that would eventually lead to an incredible first: his 2017 album DAMN. would be the first hip-hop album to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Learn more about this award-winning, critically acclaimed, and groundbreaking artist.

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• América
• Singing
• Songwriter
• Musician
• Rapping
• Producer
• African American
• American
• Singer

Informations

• Publié par: Infobase Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438195476
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Kendrick Lamar
Copyright © 2019 by Infobase
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Contents Chapters Capturing the Complexity of African-American Life Good Kid in a Mad City Getting Started Breakthrough Got to Go With Kendrick Fighting the Fear of Failure Support Materials Timeline Bibliography Further Resources About the Author Learn More About Compton Pride "Control" The Africa Trip Something That’s Just for Me
Chapters
Capturing the Complexity of African-American Life
The Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes were established in 1917 in the will of Joseph Pulitzer who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher. They Pulitzers have become famous for recognizing achievements in journalism but they are also awarded to meaningful books and poetry. In 1943, the category of “music” was added to the Pulitzer Prizes. This award had always gone to composers of classical music until the definition of the category was changed in 1998 to include a wider range of U.S. music.
In 2018, there were three finalists for the award in the music category. Two of them were modern classical music works: “Quartet,” a work for string quartet by Michael Gilbertson; and “Sound from the Bench,” a piece for chamber choir, electric guitar, and percussion by Ted Hearne. The third finalist was DAMN. , a hip-hop album released by Kendrick Lamar, a 30-year-old Californian.
It was amazing that a rap record had even been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Two jazz musicians previously had won the award—Wynton Marsalis in 1997 and Ornette Coleman in 2007—but the award had never been won by any musician associated with rock, rhythm and blues, country, or hip-hop. These were areas of music that were sometimes seen as inferior by the judges.
Kendrick Lamar had not had much success with awards to that point. He had won several Grammy Awards, presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievements in music. However, he had released three straight albums that had been nominated for, but failed to win, “album of the year,” considered by many people to be the top prize in popular music. Even DAMN. failed to win album of the year, losing to Bruno Mars’s 24K Magic . If Lamar could not even win a popular music award, how could he hope to win a Pulitzer?
Nor did the jurors appear open to breaking with tradition to celebrate a hip-hop album. The 2018 music jurors were violinist Regina Carter; Metropolitan Opera director Paul Cremo; Columbia University Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin; music critic David Hadju; and composer David Lang. They were a respected group but not known for their celebration of alternatives to classical music. It appeared that Lamar had little chance to actually win and would have to be content with the honor of his nomination.
“It took a long time for people to embrace us”
The Pulitzer Prize award winners were revealed in April 2018. To everyone’s shock, the winner “for distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year” was...KENDRICK LAMAR! As if to disguise the fact that DAMN. was the best-selling hip-hop album in 2017 with wide appeal across races and classes, the judges described the work in a particularly long-winded and academic way. They said that the album was “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.”

Rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar poses with writer Ronan Farrow and his mother, actress Mia Farrow, during the Pulitzer Prize ceremony at Columbia University in New York City, May 30, 2018.
Source: Newscom: Adrees Latif/Reuters
Lamar was thrilled. “It’s one of those things that should have happened with hip-hop a long time ago,” he said. “It took a long time for people to embrace us—people outside of our community, our culture—to see this not just as vocal lyrics, but to see that this is really pain, this is really hurt, this is really true stories of our lives on wax. And now, for it to get the recognition that it deserves as a true art form, that’s not only great for myself, but it makes me feel good about hip-hop in general.”
The board’s decision to award the Pulitzer Prize to Lamar had been unanimous. Not all of the judges had heard DAMN. before they met to discuss the prize, but when they listened to it there were no dissenting votes. “We are very proud of this selection,” said Dana Canedy, administrator of the Pulitzer Prize. “It means that the jury and its board judging system worked as it’s supposed to—the best work was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. It shines a light on hip-hop in a completely different way. This is a big moment for hip-hop music and a big moment for the Pulitzers.”
In fact, Lamar’s Pulitzer was celebrated as a victory for hip-hop culture in general. For years, many people had criticized rap as music by uneducated inner-city African Americans consumed by clueless European American teenagers in the suburbs. Lamar had singled out this attitude on the opening track of DAMN. which featured a sample of Geraldo Rivera on Fox News claiming that “hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years.” Lamar’s Pulitzer, and the success of the rap-oriented lyrics of the Broadway production of Hamilton (winner of 11 Tony awards in 2016), seemed to announce that hip-hop now was both commercially successful and critically valued. Lamar briefly noted on social media, “It’s an honor. I’ve been writing my whole life, so to get this type of recognition—it’s beautiful.”
A Versatile Genius
It’s not like Kendrick Lamar had appeared out of nowhere to win the Pulitzer Prize. By 2019, Lamar had sold more than 18 million albums, been nominated for 29 Grammys, and won 12. Although DAMN. had not won album of the year, it had been awarded five Grammys and six MTV awards, as well as NAACP Image Awards, a Brit, a Juno, a BET award and a Clio. Time  magazine had named Kendrick Lamar as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2016.
Lamar has been praised by everyone from Barack Obama to Prince. Toni Morrison, an African-American Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, said “Kendrick Lamar understands and employs blues, jazz, and soul in his music, which makes it startling. His work is more than merely brilliant; it is magic.” Part of his appeal was his versatility—the ability to excel at many different kinds of music and lyrical expression. In the same album, sometimes in the same song, Lamar could play the part of a good boy with a difficult upbringing, a threatening master of street language, a fighter for racial justice and social equality, an instructor of African American history, an expert in a variety of musical styles, and a best-selling pop music artist creating unforgettable beats.
Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was born in 1987 and raised in Compton, California. He began to receive local recognition in 2010 and his mix tapes soon created a massive on-line following. In 2011, he released his first studio album, Section.80, which he followed with three classic concept albums: good kid, m.A.A.d City (2012); To Pimp a Butterfly (2015); and DAMN. (2017). 
Each of these albums had a distinct viewpoint. good kid, m.A.A.d city was a work of autobiography influenced by West Coast hip-hop. In this album, Lamar told stories of his early adolescence in Compton where many of his friends belonged to gangs and engaged in criminal activities. The album played like a movie of Lamar’s coming of age story and earned him the reputation as a superb storyteller of inner city African American life.
The 2015 follow-up, To Pimp a Butterfly , was completely different. Instead of 90s gangsta rap, this album used pieces of funk, jazz, soul, and spoken word poetry to explore Lamar’s conflicted feelings about fame as well as his thoughts about the role of race in the United States. The album had no radio smashes but the lyrics to his song “Alright” became the unofficial anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement fighting police brutality against African Americans. In DAMN. , Lamar astonished listeners by changing his style once again. Showing no signs of declining creativity, DAMN. was easier to listen to and understand than To Pimp a Butterfly , but just as clever and conceptual. It was this album that won the Pulitzer Prize and also earned Lamar his first number-one single (“Humble”).
In all his work, Lamar has achieved enormous fame without sacrificing intelligent lyrics. While many popular artists concentrate mainly on partying, money, or failed relationships in their songs, Lamar’s lyrics often focus on issues of racism and social justice in the United States. He is an extremely vivid storyteller, a creative rhymer, and a master of clever wordplay that sends his fans to the internet to ponder the double and triple meanings of his lyrics. Yet he is equally able to produce party tunes over incredibly catchy beats, as well as an ability to stuff an amazing number of words and syllables into one bar of a song without ever stopping for breath.
Lamar’s combination of technical skill, lyrical depth, concern with ethical and social issues, and commercial success is almost unique in modern popular music. He is perhaps the only hip-hop artist who can united teenage fans, nostalgic adults searching for some mythical “Golden Age of Rap,” and even people who barely follow popular music. If anyone deserved the Pulit