After his wife became the first Black woman headline Coachella, Jay-Z took home his first ever Peabody Award for TIME: The Kalief Browder Story. The six-part series, executive produced by Mr. Carter, was selected alongside Maya Angelou: Still I Rise, Newtown and Last Men in Aleppo to receive the award.
The six-part limited series premiered on Spike last March. The television documentary documented the final years of Kalief Browder, a Bronx teenager, who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. Tragically, Browder committed suicide two years after spending three years in prison. Despite being uncomfortably truthful about the treatment of people of color within the legal system, the film was much needed and received well by viewers.
Julianne Escobedo Shepherd of Jezebel wrote, “[TIME: The Kalief Browder Story] is very likely one of the most devastating documents I have ever seen, and one of the most important: It seems impossible to watch this and not want to take action.” Maureen Ryan of Variety wrote, “TIME has an important story to tell, and is imbued with a passionate desire to present every important aspect of the injustices done to Browder — and thousands of other men and women like him. Though it uses Browder’s experiences to indict a whole system, to its credit, TIME never loses sight of the man at the center of this case, who endured a tragedy as unforgettable as it is American.”
June 25, 2017 Southern California Journalism Awards presented JAY-Z with it's inaugural Truthteller Award for his Kalief Browder docuseries.
Add Peabody to that. pic.twitter.com/jHWBlN1Vp4
— JAY-Z Daily (@JAY_Z_Daily) April 17, 2018
Jay-Z and the Browder family have yet to comment on the series’ achievement.