Kendrick Lamar talks winning Pulitzer Prize in Vanity Fair Cover Interview

Photo: CBS

Rapper and Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar is on the cover of the August issue of Vanity Fair. In the tell-all interview, Lamar shares his thoughts on everything from his writing process, and his childhood growing up in Chicago. The rapper, who grew up listening to The Temptations (he was named for lead singer Eddie Kendricks), Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, and gangsta rap, Lamar said about his writing process. “‘Execution’ is my favorite word. I spend 80 percent of my time thinking about how I’m going to execute, and that might be a whole year of constantly jotting down ideas, figuring out how I’m going to convey these words to a person to connect to it. What is this word that means this, how did it get here and why did it go there and how can I bring it back there? Then, the lyrics are easy.”

Lamar is the first rapper to win the award since the awards expansion to music in 1943, the first for a non-classical or non-jazz musician. 

Of the award, Lamar told Vanity Fair, “It was one of those things I heard about in school, but I never thought I’d be a part of it. [When I heard I got it], I thought, to be recognized in an academic world . . . whoa, this thing really can take me above and beyond. It’s one of those things that should have happened with hip-hop a long time ago. 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. Writers like Tupac, Jay Z, Rakim, Eminem, Q-Tip, Big Daddy Kane, Snoop . . . It lets me know that people are actually listening further than I expected.

The minute I hear good news, it just motivates me to do more. I don’t want to get complacent. If you asked seven out of ten people, ‘What would you do if you got the Pulitzer Prize?,’ they’d say, ‘I’d put my feet up.’ But that would make me feel I’d reached my pinnacle at 30 years old, and that wouldn’t make me feel good.”

Read the full interview here: Kendrick Lamar Vanity Fair Interview 

Pulitzer Prize–winning “poet laureate of hip-hop” @KendrickLamar has made history with his music. Lisa Robinson takes an intimate look at what drives Compton’s favorite son in V.F.’s August cover story (link in bio). Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

A post shared by Vanity Fair (@vanityfair) on Jun 28, 2018 at 4:12am PDT