Hoodie Allen Wins MacArthur Genius Grant for Song 'UPenn Girls'

Penn alum Steven “Hoodie Allen” Markowitz has been selected for a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the “Genius Grant,”  the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced Thursday. 

The MacArthur Foundation’s press release noted that the lines “Be with a Greek lady while she eating gyro platter / Anyway her big ass a whole lot fatter” and “Girl is a freshman and she loves to French kiss” demonstrate a “Dickensian deftness with the English language.” They added that “Hoodie Allen needs these $600,000 so he can continue to write lines like ‘And when she undresses it's kinda like the best shit / I guess I'm messing with an underage freshman.’” 

Since the 2009 release of his single UPenn Girls, an explosive and innovative hip-hop single in which Allen shits on half of his alma mater’s undergraduate population, Allen has been raking in the world’s most prestigious awards. In 2017 alone, he won the Grammy for record of the year, as well as a Pulitzer prize in literature. He is also rumored to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.