Kendrick Lamar wins 2018 Pulitzer Prize in music

Well deserved. One of a kind artist of my generation.

I think that Pimp is his crowning achievement and his best album, but I think I find DAMN slightly more enjoyable because it's brilliantly accessible and drives you to think at the same time. And it has this vibe, too. It's airy and trippy, bright and dark all at the same time, aggressive and woeful, and my least favorite on the album was LOVE because it seemed out of place, but now I get it. It adds contrast, going from LOVE to XXX is pretty gnarly.

And speaking of the vibe, one hot and sunny July day I went for a walk, with the album playing. Walked to the store to get something to drink and then left and wandered around, decided to cut through a few layers of trees and found this open field, just kinda walked around it, looking at the blue sky. Then walked a different direction home, through some suburban neighborhoods, past the school and through the park. And the whole time, I was wrapped by the music. The lyrics, the delivery, the beats, the grooves, some of which soulful and psychedelic. It was a memorable experience only music can sometimes provide.

 

Your logic still doesn't make any sense. But, let's let it go.

 

I always try to be honest, intellectually or otherwise, but the point I was making was more general. I'm not sure how it would be possible for awards to have no political or social aspect to them. It's a corollary of the point Terrapin Station was trying to make earlier about the inescapably subjective nature of the evaluations anyone trying to pick an award winner has to make. Inescapably subjective. And note that when a group of subjects agrees about values and evaluations and they feel they have some interest in making decisions based on them, that's a social activity, and when there's disagreement about the values and there are competing interests at play in the society (and when are we ever completely free of either?), that's political, whether it's about art or about public policy (or, as is sometimes the case, both).

L.

 

As an observation conducive to discussion, that comment isn't edifying. Or particularly responsive.

Honest communication is reliant on an exchange between equals. But a summary conclusion like the one you've just offered isn't an invitation to open up or continue the discourse. It's more like a gavel-bang that's intended to end it.

 

Sure they have, but there's a lot of other rappers not on that list or on charts that have met critical acclaim as well. I'll also add that overall I think that is a terrible list, but those are my preferences.

 

Just a note: above, I should have said, "the inescapably subjective nature of all evaluations, let alone the kind that anyone trying to pick an award winner has to make."

L.

 

Apparently, my comment is the one being discussed there.

I pulled up a list of 50 songs. I quoted only two of them. Because I didn't feel as if there was any compelling need for me to do an exhaustive list. And because I wanted to wrap up my comment so that others could return to discussing the title topic. Not for want of examples. The list I could link to support my point could easily be much more extensive. (I could also post examples directly, but I would of course have to quote them in their entirety in order to supply their full and appropriate context. Doing that would require entirely too much screen space.)

If someone else wants to direct me to other lists of top-selling, most-downloaded rap tunage from 2017 to demonstrate that my conclusions are unwarranted, be my guest.

Note that I'm focusing on the hip-hop genre in terms of its enduring appeal and popularity with the paying and downloading audience, not on a consensus of critical acclaim. I have no issues with the position that rap and hip-hop is a valid art form capable of worthy achievements. I'm contending that much of its potential is currently being abased. For reasons that have little or nothing to do with its particular innovations in rhythm and rhyme.

 

If you look at Billboard 2017 year end charts 6 of the top 10 spots are Kendrick, two Drake albums, J. Cole, Logic and Hamilton. Do any of those fit your definition of abasement? I only have a lot of experience with the Kendrick album as the others aren't my favorite but I think they are considered to be on the conscious side of hip hop. Well, whatever Drake is considered. Not really sure what Post Malone raps about. FUTURE, Migos, and Big Sean are up there too.

 

Also Jay Z, Tyler the Creator & even Joey Badass had a pretty good year. Don't think they focused heavy on either of the aforementioned subjects either

 

I thought that I had already made clear that I think some rappers are positive, legit, articulate people of good character putting out well-crafted artistic efforts. That doesn't gainsay my other points.

 

No, I don't seek to have the discussion end, it's just that forum rules prevent us from saying what we want to say.

 

I was just giving you a picture of the top ten best selling albums to see if the majority fit your conclusions. Take from it what you will.

 

This is absurd.

 

Well, this is going exactly how we all could have guessed it would...

 

This gets to the heart of something that troubled me about your otherwise thoughtful comments.

I'm sure that there's Hip Hop work out there that might be accused reasonably of glorifying the lifestyle of people who make a living selling drugs in ways that exacerbate problems caused by some pretty big and complex cultural, social, and economic forces, along with some very problematic policy decisions. But my sense of how artistic representation works makes me pretty cautious about making any blanket statements about that. Works of art don't have to function didactically, although they can. A representation of a drug dealer can glorify that drug dealer in a didactic way, teaching you to think the guy is great, a figure to be emulated. Or it could make people who know nothing of that life fear it and want to build more prisons and arm cops to the hilt. Or it could work by negative example, as some of the more "conscious" artists' works do. But the representation of gang life can also appeal to fantasy without any element of didacticism in it at all. Or it can depict a reality honestly and directly in ways that allow for honest ethical engagement with the complexity of that reality. Just because you enjoy the cartoonish or the gritty and realistic depiction of street life, doesn't mean you think it's good to live that life (whether you actually live in it or in contact with it or it's something lived by others--maybe people you've never met, maybe people you've left behind, etc.). Maybe you fear it directly or abstractly, and the work brings that fear to mind in ways that help you make sense of it or otherwise deal with it psychologically. Maybe it exemplifies a version of the extremes of human experience, like fiction about war or other types of crime, and maybe it has something to say about what human life is like at those extremes, revealing certain ideas, certain hard truths we usually don't want to think about. Etc.. Why would the representation of these things have to be didactically "positive" or else be necessarily debasing either to the art, the artist, or the audience?

Can't "positive, legit, articulate people of good character" put out "well-crafted artistic efforts" that deal with drug culture in any number of ways?

L.

 

I sincerely don't understand what the confusion is. I was trying to explain to another poster that I tend to like black artists over white artists in the arena of Blues, Jazz, R&B & Hip-Hop and the poster asked what my logic was and I was explaining there was no logic or pre-thought, I just tend to gravitate towards black artists in those genres. Seriously, what is the issue here?!

 

I don't know precisely which Billboard chart you're referring to. I need the link. A pop chart list that includes some hip-hop releases doesn't provide much focus on content emphasis of the genre itself.

I'm able to find a weekly Billboard chart for "R&B/hip-hop". But not an annual one. Here's the weekly chart Top Hip-Hop Songs / R&B Songs Chart

According to Billboard, that chart is calculated by adding together three factors: radio airplay, sales data, and streaming data. Which might possibly indicate that releases and rappers that radio airplay avoids- you know, "explicit" material- may not necessarily show up on those charts, although units might be selling/streaming very well.

 

Forum rules might prevent you from saying everything that you want to say to me. But if the only reply that you can think of as a response to my remarks is unprintable, I think that's a shame.

 

Do you only like some parts of Miles Davis’ music? Do you ignore the bass on The Shape of Jazz to Come or guitar on The Bridge. What about Keith Jarrett? Is Buddy Rich heavy handed and, by extension, have you ever listened to Ella and Louis or Charlie Parker with Strings?

Lots of artists play with lots of other artists and sometimes play songs written by other artists. I don’t care who they are.

 

When all else fails throw down the card.........

 

Trying hard to understand the man's work here and it's a struggle. I appreciate the efforts of other people to educate. Can somebody advise some tracks that don't mention N*****, Motherf*****, Biatch and MC and maybe have some melody and harmony. I love the rhythms but turn off when the arrogance or misogyny get going.

 

Oh wow, now what you wrote is actually absurd. You are going out of your way to be confused or offended, wtf.

If you were to play me Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Howlin' Wolf, Johnny Lang, Robert Johnson, Joe Bonomassa, Bukka White I would prefer the music of the black artists in that category.

If you played me Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Louis Armstrong, Louis Prima . . . ditto

Kendrick Lamar, Logic, Frank Ocean, Justin Timberlake, Kanye, Eminem . . .

Otis Redding, Van Morrison, Sam & Dave, the Righteous Bros. . . . ditto

. . . and because of this I've made the statement, in fact noticed in life that I tend to prefer Black artists over their similar-sounding White counterparts.

I'm not saying I don't like white musicians! . . . Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, The Doors, Tool, Alice Cooper are all in my top ten favourite artists.
You have NO PREFERENCES in life?

What is so confusing?! I feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone episode right now

 

Lol, I've understood what you meant from the beginning, but that's just me

 

To really sink your teeth into this album it would be best if you could get past the profanity and see the bigger picture. I understand if you can't.
One thing I can assure you is that Kendrick is anything but a misogynist. You have to understand he plays many different characters in his music.

On DAMN. I think Love doesn't have any bad words & Pride very minimal

 

Well now it just seems like you are trying to find excuses. Billboard is a particularly better representation of what people are buying and listening to than a random website's best singles list. Why did you assume I gave you a list that wasn't rap only when I listed all of the top ten and they were all rap? I just googled 2017 best selling rap albums and easily found the billboard year end chart which ranks albums by Nielsen ratings. Here.

If you want to talk about the most popular rap but say that radio play distorts it, we are no longer talking about popular rap. You know there are clean versions, right? That doesn't really apply here though since I chose an album list, not a radio single list.