The Times they are a Changin’. Bob Dylan has won a Nobel prize for literature. The Libs are in charge on North Tce. Cadbury is no longer making Vegemite chocolate. And some guy whose nickname is Kenny Kung Fu just won a Pulitzer Prize.

Actually, the Pulitzer Prize winner’s real name is Kendrick Lamar, and he is the first rapper to win the prestigious award.

Like many others, I was surprised that someone I’d never actually heard of (I had him mixed up with Lamar Odom who used to be married to a Kardashian) had won a prize like this.

Pulitzer Prizes are dedicated to those who embody “the highest moral and intellectual training” and well-known winners include writers Harper Lee, Arthur Miller, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison.

Musicians have won Pulitzers in the past, but they’ve only been classical or jazz musicians. Another musical winner was an experimental jazz pioneer called Ornette Coleman, who won in 2007 for his album Sound Grammar. Coleman, known as “The Father of Free Jazz”, is critically acclaimed but hasn’t had any number one records or platinum albums.

Lamar, on the other hand, is wildly popular; his recent album To Pimp a Butterfly was streamed nine million times on Spotify the day it was released.

Many were surprised such a prize could go to a rapper. Rap has long had a pretty bad, well, rap. Performers with names like Cam’ron, Puff Diddy, Daddy Fat Sax and Dr Dre churn out offensive, forgettable ditties packed full of c-bombs and f-bombs.

Call me old-fashioned, but I do object to my nine-year-old listening to songs about whores and “niggas” and nymphos – especially when he doesn’t know what these things are. (At least, I hope he doesn’t.)

Call me old-fashioned, but I do object to my nine-year-old listening to songs about whores and “niggas” and nymphos – especially when he doesn’t know what these things are. (At least, I hope he doesn’t.)

While anyone born since 2000 thinks this is the future of music, the rest of us wonder what happened to all the real musicians who sing real songs with actual lyrics.

Rap lyrics such as Snoop Dogg’s “bikinis, zucchinis, martinis, no weenies” don’t inspire confidence in the genre. Or this one from Ludacris: “Read your whoreoscope and eat your whore d’oeuvres”. Or Jay-Z’s: “If you shoot my dog, I’ma kill your cat”.

Rappers may think they’re deep and soulful. But I am not sure what lines like Dr Dre’s “Never let me slip, cause if I slip, then I’m slippin” add to popular culture. Or Justin Timberlake’s “Why you sleepin’ wit ya eyes closed?” Real deep Justin, thanks for that.

And there’s rapper Kanye West, who says his “greatest pain is that I will never be able to see myself perform live”.

However, it seems Lamar, above, is viewed in a very different light. The Pulitzer Prize judges awarded him the honour because of his album Damn (which also won a Grammy Award ). They praised it as “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life”. Anyone who knows what that means deserves a prize.

I forced myself to listen to some of the Damn songs and they were interesting and descriptive, reflecting Lamar’s tough upbringing on the gritty streets of LA.

Songs talk about getting shot on the streets, the death of a father and bloodshed in a gunfight. Such references have turned Lamar into an unofficial leader of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and a fitting cultural sparring partner of US President Donald Trump. He’s being called the Bob Dylan of his generation.

It’s a sign that, whether we like it or not, hip-hop and rap have come of age.

And yet there are bits of Lamar’s work I can’t stomach. The celebrated song Humble has a chorus that repeats the phrase “Hol’ up lil’ b*tch” no less than 16 times. Call me crazy, but it’s not something that I want playing in the car.

At least we knew what Bob Dylan was on about. Well, that’s when we could understand what he was saying.