President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama ,and the honorees listen to the National Anthem during the Kennedy Center Honors show on December 4, 2016. The honorees include the band The Eagles, singer Mavis Staples, actor Al Pacino, singer James Taylor and pianist Martha Argerich. (Photo by Aude Guerrucci/Getty Images)

Norman Lear, Gloria Estefan, LL Cool J, Carmen de Lavallade and Lionel Richie will receive the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors awards.

“Each of this year’s honorees became known to and loved by the world because of their complete originality and bold genius. They are creators of the highest order,” said Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter in a statement. “As President Kennedy’s living memorial, the Kennedy Center is so proud to shine a light on their boundless ‘contributions to the human spirit.'”

LL Cool J is the first rapper in the awards’ 40-year history to be honored.

“To be able to go from the corner in Queens beatin’ on a garbage can to getting a Kennedy Center Honor with this type of company and to be first is just an amazing feeling. You know, it just adds another level of legitimacy to hip-hop culture,” he told the Associated Press.

But while the Post’s entertainment section took pains to note the historic significance of LL Cool J’s inclusion, the paper’s arts critic lamented the awards turn in recent years toward “commercial entertainment culture” (he also made the same case in a 2015 screed and last year on Twitter).

With the exception of de Lavallade, the honorees “are all great talents, but belong to a commercial entertainment culture that has no need of the Kennedy Center, or the awards that bear its name, to establish and maintain a connection with their enormous audiences,” Philip Kennicott argues:

This year, not one violinist, pianist, conductor or orchestral composer has chosen. No one from the opera world is represented. Despite de Lavallade’s theatrical credits, theater is mostly absent this year, with no playwrights, actors, directors or designers among the bunch. Sam Shepard died this week without ever achieving the favor won in recent years by the Eagles, David Letterman and Oprah Winfrey. Not one artist who has taken up the legacy of Aaron Copland or Tennessee Williams or Virgil Thomson (all honored in the early years of the Kennedy Center) is included. Majors figures in American musical life, such as composers Philip Glass and John Adams, still await an award, as do opera stars Kathleen Battle, Samuel Ramey and Frederica von Stade. For a cultural center built around an opera house and symphony hall, it’s depressing that this year not one classical musician has made the list and that again, this year, none of the musicians who have made America a force in pioneering the early instruments movement were included.

In other potentially looming controversies, the U.S. president traditionally attends the awards ceremony and honors the recipients at a White House reception beforehand. And several of the honorees have been outspoken critics of President Donald Trump (Lear once called him the “middle finger” of the American people and Estefan contributed to a song called “We’re All Mexicans” amid the election rhetoric).

While the Kennedy Center says that Trump will be in attendance, Normal Lear told the Washington Post that he was told the president is a “maybe.” The 95-year-old writer and producer will attend the ceremony—the recipients traditionally sit alongside the president—but doesn’t plan to go to the White House reception.

“I can’t see myself visiting a White House, what (Trump) called a dump, that dumps on the National Endowment for the Arts,” he told the paper.

The ceremony will take place on December 3, and it will air on CBS on December 26.