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The 2018 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Music
For distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000).

DAMN., by Kendrick Lamar

Recording released on April 14, 2017, a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.

Kendrick Lamar accepts the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music from Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. (Photo: Eileen Barroso/Columbia University)

Winning Work

DAMN.

By

Kendrick Lamar

Storytelling has been Lamar’s greatest skill and most primary mission, to put into (lots of) words what it's like to grow up as he did—to articulate, in human terms, the intimate specifics of daily self-defense from your surroundings. Somehow, he’s gotten better.

-- Matthew Trammell, Pitchfork

 

Biography

Platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated rapper Kendrick Lamar is one of the rare artists who has achieved critical and commercial success while earning the respect and support of those who inspired him.

-- Andy Kellman, All Music Guide

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Music in 2018:

Michael Gilbertson

Premiered on February 2, 2017 at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, a masterwork in a traditional format, the string quartet, that is unconstrained by convention or musical vogues and possesses a rare capacity to stir the heart.

Ted Hearne

Recording released on March 24, 2017 by The Crossing, a five-movement cantata for chamber choir, electric guitar and percussion that raises oblique questions about the crosscurrents of power through excerpts from sources as diverse as Supreme Court rulings and ventriloquism textbooks.

The Jury

Regina Carter(Chair)

violinist

Paul Cremo

Dramaturg/Director of Opera Commissioning Program

Farah Jasmine Griffin

William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies

David Hajdu

Professor of Journalism

David Lang*

composer

Winners in Music

2017

Du Yun

Premiered on January 6, 2016, at the Prototype Festival, 3LD Arts and Technology Center, New York City, a bold operatic work that integrates vocal and instrumental elements and a wide range of styles into a harrowing allegory for human trafficking in the modern world. Libretto by Royce Vavrek.
2016

Henry Threadgill

Recording released on May 26, 2015 by Zooid, a highly original work in which notated music and improvisation mesh in a sonic tapestry that seems the very expression of modern American life (Pi Recordings).
2015

Julia Wolfe

A powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th Century.
2014

John Luther Adams

A haunting orchestral work that suggests a relentless tidal surge, evoking thoughts of melting polar ice and rising sea levels.
See All Music

2018 Prize Winners

Investigative Reporting

Staff of The Washington Post

For purposeful and relentless reporting that changed the course of a Senate race in Alabama by revealing a candidate’s alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls and subsequent efforts to undermine the journalism that exposed it.
See All 2018 Winners