Midway through his snarling Drake diss, “Not Like Us,” Kendrick Lamar issued a succinct, but forceful personal mandate: “Sometimes you gotta pop out and show n—as.” It was both a plan of action and a self-fulfilling mandate.
Since then, he’s won that rap beef in the most unequivocal terms imaginable: “Not Like Us” has been nominated for multiple Grammys, a rare diss track to achieve that status (ironically the last was Drake’s Meek Mill swipe “Back to Back”), the peak of a six-song flurry, beginning with his guest verse of Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” that got just one response before its target conceded with silence. Months after his historic, L.A.-boosting “Pop Out” concert on Juneteenth, he was selected to perform at halftime for Super Bowl LIX. After “Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers,” Lamar’s strong yet challenging sixth studio album, it was a re-coronation for the best rapper in the world — a flawless album rollout, but without an album. Key word: Was. On Friday, K.Dot took a break from intermittent Finsta posts to drop “GNX,” a surprise LP that immediately eclipsed every rap release this year. Combining vicious sincerity, kaleidoscopic California sounds, and the athleticism of a decathlete, “GNX” is Kendrick Lamar at his most compelling — a mosaic that indisputably reaffirms his status as the most dynamic spitter the world has to offer.
Layered in Cali ancestry, “GNX” stands as a self-contained museum for the West Coast diaspora of sound, with producers like Sounwave, Mustard and Jack Antonoff others supplying the canvases. There are also interludes of mariachi (“Gloria”) and hyphy (“Hey Now”). If you’re searching for G-Funk, you can find its foundational DNA on “Dodger Blue,” which feels like a cousin of “Computer Love”; imagine Caine pulling up on Ilena in “Menace II Society.” It goes beyond the soundscapes, too. You can find a Drakeo the Ruler-inspired flow here (“Peakaboo”), and a Roddy Ricch feature there (“Dodger Blue”) — apart from two SZA spotlights, all of the other features are from relative newcomers. Somewhere in between, there are verses from L.A.’s sprawling underground (“TV Off”). Everywhere, there’s Lamar’s deeply coded genius.
At 44 minutes, “GNX” is at once diverse, homogeneous, expansive, and concise — funny and deadly serious. The latter part surfaces on the intro “Wacced Out Murals,” wherein Lamar unloads flurries of righteous indignation at both Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, and, seemingly, a certain Toronto rapper who allegedly paid for illicit Kendrick information. It’s a searing and vengeful opener that soars because of both Lamar’s vocal performance and a track that sounds like a dystopian prison lockdown.
At times, the production is as inventive as the lyrics. For “Peekaboo,” Sounwave re-engineers a Little Beaver sample into a sinister 405 joyride. Embedded with strong features from fellow Cali native AzChike, it plays out with all the nocturnal bounce of a “Paramedic, Part 2” with an even more indelible hook, which itself is reinforced by continual callbacks that turn every bar into a micro-chorus. Here, Lamar also serves up another reminder of his technical rap acumen — his kinetic couplets back-handspring off the beat. His words are layered in eccentric wit and convincing menace: “Peekaboo, I just put them boogers in my chain/ Peekaboo, eighty-pointers like a Kobe game/ Peekaboo, 7.62s’ll make ’em plank/ Peekaboo, poppin’ out, you better not smut my name.”
Infectious as it is, “Peekaboo” isn’t even the catchiest tune here — that one goes to “Squabble Up.” For the track, Kendrick jumping jacks over a track that turns a Debbie Deb classic into a sprightly hyphy anthem. Kendrick’s fluttering syllables and a jittery bassline bounce like a slinky’s recoil. The refrain, a nod to Cali street skirmishes, is simple, yet emphatic — an easily repeatable hook that could send the track to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s threaded by Lamar’s instincts as a performer — another keyword.
A violent swirl of cadences and emotions, Kendrick can turn onomatopeias and outstretched syllables into the best kinds of phonetic adventures. Remember him shouting, “Wop! Wop! Wop! Wop! Wop! Dot, fuck ‘em up” on “Not Like Us”? It’s an interactive touch that encourages listeners to repeat the bars — and they do. He repeats the technique all across “GNX.” Within hours of its release, “TV Off” became a trending topic as fans have been repurposing Kendrick’s manic, “Mustard” shoutout into an inescapable collage of memes. Of course, that part wouldn’t have hit like it did if the song weren’t incredible. His delivery, as a Mustard beat that feels like a futuristic L.A. drumline, powers a twitchy chorus that will, undoubtedly, be shouted on dancefloors everywhere. It’s hard to picture the same artist topping “Not Like Us” in the same year, but “TV Off” and “Squabble Up” make it a little easier to expand your imagination. It’s clearly easy for Kendrick to expand his.
And it’s all totally distinct — even when his songs can be remixes of previous concepts. The idea of having a conversation with God on your song isn’t a new one; reimagining key historical Black figures as yourself isn’t either. But, doing both at the same time is probably a new one — let alone while mimicking a Tupac Shakur classic with flawless cadence. For that one, he spits over a sample of “Made N—az,” adding soft string arrangements that bring a layer of sentimentality to a tale of sin and redemption — a biblical rendering of a classic struggle between good and evil.
As the album winds to a close, “Heart Pt. 6” is a reminisce about his early career with his former label, Top Dawg Entertainment, that explains their amicable separation so Lamar could “evolve [and] place my skillset as a Black exec.” It ends with a moral: “To all my young n—as, let me be the demonstration/ How to conduct differences with a healthy conversation… Pick up the phone and bust it up before the history is lost/ Hand-to-handshake is good when you have a heart-to-heart.”
He’s a bit less successful on the “I Gave You Power”-esque “Gloria”; announcing a song’s central metaphor on the literal track in 2024 is a little less forgivable than when Nas did it in 1996. And yet, the chorus and Kendrick’s conviction mostly sell it anyway, even if the LP could have closed on a more climactic crescendo.
“GNX” is, more than any one attribute, a testament to K.Dot’s ability to distill grand ideas through the lens of his own influences. Mixed in a cauldron of sounds and sensations, those concepts melt into visceral songs for the ages: It’s all so meticulous and so regional, yet primal enough to strike something universal. In the forgettable parade of everyday releases, it’s easy to forget that albums like this one are possible. But yet again, Kendrick Lamar popped out and proved it.
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