Music, poetry, and rap songs

In 2018, Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his rap album, Damn. 

The Pulitzer Board called Damn. "A virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life."

The first time this award was given to someone outside of the classical and jazz genres, this monumental moment was plastered on every newspaper, rap Instagram page, and Twitter headline. I clearly remember this day because it was the day I discovered rap music. I know that statement doesn’t sound like much, but to a middle-school girl obsessed with reading, writing, and music, rap was the perfect combination of all three. 

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to a Kendrick Lamar song (linked is my favorite one off of the winning album), you’ll realize that it sounds a lot like lyrical poetry, and that’s because it is. Delving into topics like racial discrimination, the prevalence of religion in our society, and police brutality, his songs are able to capture the essence of what poetry achieves: being able to tell a story. I can continue on with my tangent on the genius of Lamar, but I’ll spare you the details and put it concisely. Lamar is able to take a medium of art and add a meaning which hits home to the millions who listen to his music, and creating poetry with a modern twist. 

When you really look at it, music, and even more, rap music, is just a more socially-acceptable version of poetry, complete with all the poetic devices we learn in 9th grade: rhythm, alliteration, repetition, rhyme, and tone. In a way this blog post sounds like another attempt to get poetry to relate to our everyday lives, but in reality, there’s no need to relate because poetry is already prevalent in every corner you look.