Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar Duckworth is the first musician outside classical and jazz to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Music, an honor awarded in 2018 for Damn. Born June 17, 1987, and raised in Compton, California, Lamar began releasing music as K.Dot while in high school. He signed with Top Dawg Entertainment in 2005 and co-founded Black Hippy with fellow TDE artists Jay Rock, ScHoolboy Q and Ab-Soul.

His 2011 debut album, Section.80, led to a joint deal with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope Records. Lamar reached a larger audience with 2012's Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, a gangsta rap-influenced concept album rooted in his Compton upbringing. It became the longest-charting hip-hop studio album on the Billboard 200, and Rolling Stone later named it the greatest concept album of all time. His writing has drawn on personal narrative, political criticism and social commentary about African-American culture, while his records have incorporated West Coast rap, jazz, funk, soul, R&B and pop.

In 2015, Lamar scored his first Billboard Hot 100 number one through his appearance on the remix of Taylor Swift's “Bad Blood.” That year he also released To Pimp a Butterfly, the first of five consecutive Lamar albums to reach number one on the Billboard 200. Damn followed in 2017, led by the US number-one single “Humble.” He contributed to the 2018 film Black Panther soundtrack, and “All the Stars” earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. His fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, arrived in 2022 and concluded his tenure with TDE and Aftermath.

Lamar co-founded the creative company PGLang with longtime collaborator Dave Free and has also worked with Free in film. In 2024, his highly publicized feud with Drake coincided with the release of his sixth album, GNX. Songs including “Like That,” “Not Like Us,” “Squabble Up” and “Luther” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. “Not Like Us” won five Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year; “Luther” also won Record of the Year and spent 13 weeks at number one in the United States, his longest run atop the chart. Lamar's awards include 27 Grammys, the most for a rapper, along with two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Brit Award and numerous American Music, Billboard Music, MTV Video Music and BET Hip Hop Awards. In 2025, he headlined the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show in history, while his Grand National Tour with SZA became the highest-grossing co-headlining tour of all time.