Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar (born 1987 in Compton) is one of the most important rappers of his generation, the only hip-hop artist to have won the Pulitzer Prize for music. Montreux welcomed him in 2013, at the very start of his fame.

Kendrick Lamar at the Montreux Jazz Lab

17 July 2013: at the Montreux Jazz Lab

On 17 July 2013, a year after “good kid, m.A.A.d city”, Kendrick Lamar set the Montreux Jazz Lab alight, the Montreux Jazz Festival stage devoted to contemporary music. Backed by a real live band, he rolled out “Backseat Freestyle”, “m.A.A.d city”, “Money Trees” and “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” in an overheated room.

The Compton rapper was not yet the global, Pulitzer-crowned star: Montreux caught him at the exact moment everything tipped over.

Before the Pulitzer

Two years later, “To Pimp a Butterfly” (2015) lifted him among the major artists of his time, marrying rap, jazz and funk. In 2018 he became the first hip-hop artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for music, for “DAMN.”.

That the Jazz Lab welcomed him as early as 2013, when he was barely rising, says much about the festival’s ear: at Montreux, Kendrick Lamar’s rap was no intruder, but one more link in the long history of African-American music celebrated by the lake.