In the spirit of the Lunar New Year, let’s call this current period the “Year of Kendrick Lamar.” It began on March 22, 2024 with Lamar’s feature on Future and Metro Boomin’s “We Don’t Trust You.” The barn-burning diss track “Like That” ignited what would prove to be a generation-defining feud with Canadian pop-star Drake and set the stage for Kendrick’s dominance throughout 2024. This “Year of Kendrick Lamar” already has its conclusion set for Feb. 16, 2025 with his headlining performance at Super Bowl LIX.
Following the four-song succession of diss tracks dedicated to Aubrey Graham earlier this year, “Euphoria,” “6:16 in LA,” “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us,” Kendrick found himself undisputed as the biggest rapper in the world, dominant among the tremendously large hip-hop game. Now, with his sixth studio album, “GNX,” which was surprise-released on Nov. 22, Lamar finds himself balancing two worlds: the contemplative and the competitive.
The album opens confidently, with the dramatic and foreboding “Wacced Out Murals,” on which Kendrick expresses his frustration with the present industry, interspersed with majestic mariachi vocals by Deyra Barrera. Between expressing his disappointment with his idols (“Irony, I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down”) and declaring his own greatness (“Whacked the murals out, but it ain’t no legends if my legend ends”), the song foreshadows Kendrick’s main conflict on the album: a disgust with the hip-hop game itself and his own importance in the game.
A large amount of “GNX” is dedicated to aggressive bangers with Kendrick’s hostile rapping defining a general tribute to West Coast hip-hop that permeates the record, featuring numerous nationally unknown up-and-coming rappers. The upbeat dismissiveness of “Squabble Up” (“I feel good, get the **** out of my face”), is contrasted to the creeping menace of “Hey Now,” joined by a great guest verse from Dody6.
The 2Pac tribute “Reincarnated” borrows the aggressive flow and foreboding beats of “The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory” with Kendrick at his most hostile (“Every day, a new version of me, a third of me demented, cemented in pain”), and “TV Off” uses Mustard’s production to embrace an explosive hyphy-influenced sound (“Got a big mouth but he lack big ideas/Send him to the moon, that’s just how I feel, yellin’/It’s not enough”), which closes with an ominous chant from Lefty Gunplay (“**** get crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious”).
Still, the album has its more emotional moments. The romanticism of “Luther,” featuring SZA and making prominent use of a Luther Vandross sample to which the song owes its name, stands out as an instant hit. “Man at the Garden,” with its muted and reserved instrumentation combined with transcendent background vocalizations, tackles Kendrick’s contemplations on his role in the rap game (“Pray for those who prayed against me/Every reason why my ancestors sent me/***** I deserve it all”), while the funk-inflected “Heart P. 6” sees Kendrick considering his hopes for the future (“Now it’s about Kendrick, I wanna evolve, place my skillset as a Black exec”) with his reservations about himself, standing alongside the Wallie the Sensei and Siete7x featuring “Dodger Blue” (“Don’t take it personal/You won’t be the first to know”), as having the most fluidly sublime beat on the record.
The album undeniably peaks with the positively fantastic closing track “Gloria”. Once more featuring SZA, the song begins apparently as an ode of love to Kendrick’s fiancée Whitney Alford, discussing the history of their relationship (“Remember when granny died?/You looked at me and said, ‘Baby, dry your eyes/Depend on me as your relief, let your anger be mine’/We was locked in ever since then/So territorial, even took me ‘way from my friends”). However, the song ultimately uses this as a double entendre for Kendrick’s other love: his pen, topped off with a majestic chorus from SZA.
“GNX”, while easily Kendrick Lamar’s shortest, most compact album, still offers a wide-ranging and diverse experience, tackling a life of contradictions from the eyes of the biggest rapper on the planet. From West-Coast posse cuts, like the harsh title track (“Tell ‘em Kendrick did it/Tell ‘em Peysoh did it/Tell ‘em Hitta did it/Tell ‘em YoungThreat did it”) to the transcendentally complex, like “Gloria” (“Whenever you want me, you got me ’til the end of time/Just gotta let you know”), “GNX” is easily the best album of 2024.
