Dames Nation, THIS is how you make an entrance:

An entrance that is particularly apt for a week in which two of our foremost purveyors of Black Excellence have absolutely owned in spaces more commonly associated with a pretty unbearable whiteness: first, Beyoncé became the first black woman to headline at the Coachella music festival, and delivered a masterful 2-hour set that brought Twitter (definitely) and the festival itself (we have to imagine) to their knees. And then, Kendrick Lamar did the Pulitzer Prize committee a small favor by allowing them to announce the existence of their Award for Music by conferring it on his 2017 album, DAMN. Which means that an album infuriatingly snubbed by the Grammys has now become the first non-classical, non-jazz album to win a Pulitzer.

The account of how the Pulitzer’s massive change in direction was settled upon is… kind of adorably prosaic.? According to Dana Canedy, the recently elected administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, it went like this:

The music committee were considering a piece of music they felt had hip-hop influences and said, "Well if we're considering a piece of music that has hip-hop influences, why aren't we considering hip-hop?" And someone said, "That's exactly what we should do." And then someone said, "We should be considering Kendrick Lamar" and the group said "absolutely." So then, right then, they decided to listen to the entire album and decided "This is it.