If You're Mad About 'DAMN.,' You Probably Need to Listen to More Hip Hop
I don’t think anyone really expected the announcement that Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his album DAMN., would prompt musicians and composers and critics of all colors and creeds to join hands and sing Kumbaya. But I was still surprised at how many of us considered Lamar’s win a musical apocalypse, signaling the end of any meaning the Pulitzer Prize for Music once held. (A quick peek at the comments of your favorite blog/media outlet’s post on the news will tell you everything you need to know about this). With that in mind, there’s really only two things to say:
- For many a hip hop listener, this is what the Grammy’s feel like every DAMN. year and
- Once again, the classical community —contemporary or otherwise — needs to look inwards and determine the causes of this particular reaction’s violent apoplexy. (Hint: it’s probably about race. Actually, it’s always about race.)
Many of the criticisms aimed at Kendrick (and hip hop music in general) are truly baffling. Some complain that since rappers often work with songwriters and producers, rappers shouldn’t be eligible for these awards (as if your favorite composer always wrote their own librettos, or it’s routine for orchestras to engineer and produce their own recordings). Others argue that it can’t truly be “music” because all those loops and repetitive phrases can’t amount of art worthy of critical merit (in which case I have some terrible news about this acclaimed composer named Steve Reich). And all of this is couched in language that discredits hip hop as an art form.
It’s disheartening to read these opinions from self-professed “non-listeners” of hip hop music, and it also assumes the Pulitzer for Music is reserved for compositions born of the Western European classical tradition, despite the Pulitzer’s 2004 declaration to expand the works up for consideration in order to “honor the full range of distinguished American musical compositions” (Paul Moravec’s Tempest Fantasy was that year’s winner). But while it’s tempting to roast these opinions, this isn’t the place for that. Twitter is the place for that. Instead, we’re going to appreciate what this win means for hip hop and for music rooted in the Black American tradition.
Kendrick doesn’t love people enough to put his faith in man, so I can’t imagine he’s hung up on this negative criticism.
Hip hop, since it was born in the Bronx almost four decades ago, has long been America’s cultural bastard. Early beats were cobbled together with new technologies — "something from nothing," as the saying goes. But even though it eventually surpassed the limits of novelty, the rest of the musical establishment was reluctant to give it a seat at the table. So it fixed itself a plate and kept itself fueled.
Fueled despite poor television coverage at the Grammys, political pundits’ and terrified suburban parents’ efforts to censor or ban the music, and whatever the hell Dee Dee Ramone was up to in the late 80’s. But even in recent years, the questions of ownership in hip-hop and the lack of mainstream recognition for some of its most talented artists seem to be sticking around. Kendrick is a fine artist to consider in this respect. If you use the Grammys as a metric for how well a certain sound is “accepted” by old judges, Kendrick Lamar is a terrible rapper. His albums Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City (2012), To Pimp a Butterfly (2014) and DAMN. (2017) were all nominated for album of the year — but lost to efforts by Daft Punk, Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars, respectively. That Good Kid loss was extra puzzling, not because it lost to Daft Punk (who produced a solid cut with Random Access Memories), but because it lost Rap Album of the Year to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ The Heist — a move that any hip hop listener would be quick to contest.
And maybe that’s part of the problem. I’m willing to bet that a great deal of people arguing that DAMN. is undeserving of such accolades haven’t listened to the album, or listened to much hip hop at all. And that’s OK! What is a bad thing, is if I go to some kind of international potluck, take one look at food I have never tasted, pass on it, and then proceed with the rest of dinner bad mouthing what very well may be delicious cuisine.
In the conversations DAMN. has encouraged, people have been pointing out that since the Prize was first awarded in 1943, this is the first time it has gone to a non-classical or jazz piece. The problem with that statement is that it implies jazz has always been treated by the Pulitzer jury with dignity. It has not. In 1965 Duke Ellington was denied a Pulitzer citation — and there was no Prize given at all.
Sometimes we like to tell ourselves awards like these don’t matter — game will always recognize game, trophy or not — but even someone like Ellington understood the function of such an honor. As he told critic Nat Hentoff after the denial, he couldn’t be surprised that his contributions to black music would remain unrecognized. “Most Americans still take it for granted that European-based-classical music, if you will, is the only really respectable kind. By and large, in this country, jazz has always been the kind of man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.” It’s not difficult to see hip-hop in the same situation.
After the Pulitzers were announced, Pulitzer Prize Administrator Dana Canedy spoke with Billboard about the decision to recognize Kendrick. “[The jury was] considering a piece of music they felt had hip-hop influences and said, ‘Well if we're considering a piece of music that has hip-hop influences, why aren't we considering hip-hop?’,” Canedy explained. “And someone said, "That's exactly what we should do." So next time you have the urge to dismiss this album or think a piece that falls into whatever your working recognition of music is, I encourage you to breathe, sit down and be humble.
