Kendrick Lamar just became the first rapper to win a Pulitzer

Kendrick Lamar.
(Image credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Coachella)

There's officially no need for Kendrick Lamar to be humble anymore.

On Monday, Lamar became the first rapper to win a Pulitzer for music for his latest album, Damn. The Pulitzer committee hailed Damn as a collection of songs that capture "the complexity of modern African-American life" with " vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism." Lamar's fourth studio album beat out two other collections on the shortlist: a traditional string quartet, and an album that apparently pulled excerpts from ventriloquism textbooks.

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Mary Catalfamo

Mary Catalfamo is a web intern at The Week. She's a junior at Syracuse University, where she studies journalism and English textual studies. Direct book recommendations and jokes about her hometown of Buffalo, New York to her Twitter.