Kendrick Lamar - GNX

Hi, everyone. Bigthony Thrilltano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well. It's time for a review of the new Kendrick Lamar album, GNX.

Kendrick Lamar Duckworth. Compton rapper, generational talent, someone considered by many to be one of the best songwriters of his generation. He has long been both a rapper's rapper and somebody whose creative appeal transcends the genre itself, as his music and name tends to command respect with music fans of all stripes.

That's not to say he and his work aren't ever polarizing or controversial. After all, this sixth album of his is driving a lot of discourse right now. But way before this record came out, Kendrick was already having a pretty hot 2024. As this past spring, he came out the victor in a multi-track beef with commercial Canadian hip hop titan, Drake.

If there is such a thing in the modern rap landscape as a multinational bank that's too big to fail, that's Drake. Because recently, he's been releasing a lot of music that many consider to not really hold a candle to his more classic works. And yet, he continues to hold strong as the most streamed modern rap artist today. And his unwavering grip on the industry these days is something he seems to be very well aware of, and he operates as such. Whether he's putting little effort into an uninspired collaboration or song, or sending out not-so-subliminal shots on a group of bars, or making cavalier comments in hermetically sealed interviews and promotional interactions where he is not likely to see much pushback.

For a while, it seemed like this was just the state of things in popular music and popular hip hop today that they weren't really going to change or shift in any direction, see a shake up in any way until the song "Like That" hit the internet, the song off of the Metro Boomin and Future project, We Don't Trust You, that dropped recently, which featured Kendrick Lamar. Yes, on that track, Kendrick fired off a few shots that basically got this domino effect going. "No big three, just big me." J. Cole responds. He apologizes. Drake jumps in. He's responding to a bunch of people. Kendrick is responding to Drake. Tracks are going back and forth. Drake's getting called a pedophile on a song that managed to become one of the biggest hits of the year.

Talk about a series of events.

But while Drake has been mostly in reset mode at this point, waiting for the moment where he can reenter things and act like everything is normal. Kendrick has been doing victory lap after victory lap after victory lap with music videos and the pop-out show and the announcement he's going to play the next Super Bowl. And now he has a whole new album out that he dropped with no warning whatsoever outside of a one-minute video and music snippet teaser.

Mind you, the music featured in that teaser, none of that music is actually on this record. So who knows if Kendrick has other stuff locked and loaded still, the man does like to tease.

But yeah, the title of this record is GNX, which is short for Grand National Experimental, a Buick model that was produced in the late '80s that is also presumably featured on the front cover of this album and is mentioned in the lyrics of this record at least a few times.

Okay, let me start to really dig into this album because it's a bit of an interesting one to explain context-wise. Like, what's the sound? What's the narrative? What's the direction on this project? I'll put it this way. There's been a lot of conversation in recent months about Kendrick Lamar being the Rapper of the Year in 2024. The only real output people would have to base that accolade off of are the diss tracks he wrote against Drake. There are some people who, for whatever reason, believe that you can't be Rapper of the Year off a few diss tracks. How are you Rapper of the Year and you haven't had a project out?

Well, here is the project.

In some ways with this record, it feels like Kendrick has bottled up the aesthetics, the vibes, the energy, the in your face attitude, the callbacks to a classic West Coast decades of hip hop, the lyricism, also the fact that he is taking no prisoners and responding to and addressing those in rap music and beyond who just refuse to show him respect and give him the accolades that he deserves. He's just bottling all of that up into an album, a very short, punchy, to the point, merciless record that has some very thoughtful and personal pockets held within it as well.

In fact, I would actually say this is one of Kendrick's best sequenced albums to date. It's a very smooth, versatile, entertaining listen with many different tracks that scratch many different itches.

Let's start digging into the progression of the album, starting with the opener, "Wacced Out Murals". In true Kendrick Lamar fashion, the first few seconds of this track are colored by some very odd and eerie vocal harmonies and a guest vocalist who's brought in to set some narrative tone. In this case, it's Deyra Barrera, a Mexican mariachi singer who turns up now and also in the middle and toward the end of the album. To put it in the nerdiest terms possible, this is a very Lamarian device at this point. We know on his albums, Kendrick likes to commit to bits, create threads that run throughout multiple tracks, as well as plant Easter eggs and create thoughtful references.

Now, some fans read into this stuff in a way that's just downright conspiratorial. But considering, remembering he's done stuff along these lines in the past, I don't think it's out of pocket to presume that all of these appearances are connected somehow. If you assemble all of Barrera's lines throughout the record in English, it translates roughly to something like, "I feel your presence here last night / and we start to cry / that reflects in your gaze / the night / you and me / seated Anita and you."

This could be a nod to singer Anita Baker, who is also referenced on the record in Kendrick's lyrics, because this album isn't just simply about encapsulating the flows and the confrontational vibe of the Drake disses, as well as the "Watch the Party Die" single. Here is the Air Force ones on the single cover art.

No, this record isn't just about that, because like most Kendrick Lamar projects, this album is also a continuation of his relationship with his craft and art at large. As there are numerous meditations across this record that are essentially about the power of music, the importance of not misusing your influence, your abilities, which, if you're to go by the lyrics on this record, are something that Kendrick still sees very much as a godly gift – one he is still figuring out how to wield authentically and in a way that manifests the greatest net positive benefit, which makes for a compelling narrative, but still a surprising one to see crop up again on an album, especially after seeing Kendrick wresetle his savior complex into submission a few years ago on his Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers album.

You heard it. This man, very clearly on that record, came to the conclusion that his efforts on this front were mostly futile and that it was more important to save himself and work toward the health and safety of his family, of his children, of his loved ones, and break these cycles of distrust and dishonesty and abuse in his own life. This is funny, especially in the wake of this recent beef with Drake, because Kendrick's biggest detractors are constantly on the search for something about him that is inconsistent or hypocritical, and they can't really seem to land on a character flaw that is staring them right in the face, or at least they can't make it work against him in a measurable way.

But still, to this day, Kendrick is infatuated with the idea of his talents and the power of music having the capacity to enact some greater, some positive, some necessary change. And while part of me wants to buy into that because undeniably the talent is there. Plus, I, as a music fan myself, have experienced and also witnessed the powerful changes that music can bring. Still, though, Kendrick's motivations at times do read as self-serving, even if he does on this very album call his own motivations into question from time to time.

Because I mean, one track on this record is pretty much three straight minutes of him telling us that he deserves pretty much every accolade and opportunity and word of praise that we could conjure for him.

Sure, while lots of rappers, past and present, have told us in one way or another that they're the best, they're the greatest, this "Man at the Garden" track is a goddamn treatise on why Kendrick Lamar deserves that number one spot. It's musically designed to whip you up into an emotional frenzy at the very end that'll have you being like, Oh, yes, Kendrick, you deserve everything. Which, while sure, that read of the song is a bit reductive, we can't pretend like Kendrick's self-interest on this song doesn't factor at all. It is worth asking, Am I being initiated into a cult here?

But wasn't I explaining the intro, "Wacced Out Murals"? I've digressed here. I'm going to digress further and try to sum up this record by saying it's a loosely conceptualized flurry of ignorant West Coast bangers, melodic jams, as well as heady writing exercises that remind me of the genetic makeup of Damn, Kendrick Lamar's huge, commercially successful 2017 record, which for me personally, really ranks as the weakest of his big studio album releases.

But I think GNX succeeds where Damn faltered. The bops on this thing hit hard. And not only do they hit hard, but they are just downright ridiculously visceral and in your face, and they are aggressive, they are mean. They're stupidly smart and endlessly charismatic, too. And the smoother, more low-key cuts on the record are equally addictive.

Finally, these more lyrically dense cuts on the records, while they are more compartmentalized than they might be on more narrative or grand conceptual records from Kendrick, they still involve some of the best storytelling of his career so far.

So again, "Wacced Out Murals", intro track, which is really this slow burning, cinematic start to the album. Kendrick's flows are steady, and he delivers them with this really frustrated tone of voice. It sounds like he's wrapping through clenched teeth a lot of the time. There's a real dry vocal mix on this track, too, and a lot of other cuts on this record as well. With the way this was EQed and recorded, he could have laid this thing down in his kitchen for all I know. I feel like going about it in this way, foregoing a lot of the vocal acrobatics and layers and the touch-ups that we might have heard on previous Kendrick records, makes for a more raw and wild than just like a blunt experience and listen.

Now, I think the main angle of these bars and this album at large is pretty straightforward. It is stated in a simple line of, "Fuck a double entendre / I want you all to feel this shit." And true to his word, GNX is maybe Kendrick's most what you see is what you get project yet. Because he does not mince words as he portrays his current state. He sees a lot of jealousy being thrown his way in his position with his success as he opens this song with the story of a defaced Kendrick Lamar mural that was put up in Compton that snowballs into being disliked by many of his contemporaries. Also, Lil Wayne having words about being unhappy with being passed over for the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show performance, which Kendrick Lamar is headlining. He shouts out Nas for congratulations inflating him, also mentions Snoop Dogg for sharing that Tupac Snoop Dogg AI Drake conceptualized, "Tailor Made" diss track months back.

At the end of the day, he portrays this gap of success and popularity between him and everyone else to the work that he puts in and encourages those who want to get to where he's at to do the same work that he's doing. Maybe you'll see the same success. I think this rolls into sentiments around him wanting to see the party die, calling back again to that "Watch the Party Die" single. "Okay, fuck your hip hop / I watched the party just die / Dudes cackling about" – blank, edit, blank there, not mentioning who they're cackling about – "while all of you all is on trial." Which, yes, it's an edit on the line, but the intentions are still clear because people could either be laughing at the downfall of Drake or figures like Diddy in the wake of accusations or stuff like that that have been thrown their way.

But the issues on this front, Kendrick has been trying to highlight through his diss tracks, through his recent material, they don't boil down to just two guys.

So with this modus operandi type track, Kendrick really tells us what he's about to tell us, and then the underlying implications of that play out with the rest of the album.

As with the next track, you get "Squabble Up", and the beauty of this synthy Bay Area smash is that, honestly, you don't really need to spend a lot of time explaining it. Its appeal is instantaneous. It's incredibly catchy. It's also deeply West Coast aesthetically with the synced up bass hits and the clap and all the open hi-hat hits and some really awesome touches of electro era synths all over the track, as well as a freestyle music vocal snippet from Debbie Deb's 1983 cut "When I Hear Music". ("When I Hear Music, It Made Me Dance.") Meanwhile, Kendrick's flows and bars throughout the song are smooth and effortless, yet still eccentric and over the top. With these froggy inflections, he gives us lines like, "Woke up looking for the broccoli, high key / keep a horn, I mean, that Kamasi." And really leans into the weirder pockets of his voice when he's giving us refrains like, "I feel good, get the fuck out of my face."

It's absolutely insane and calls back to recent collaborations, in my opinion, that he's had with his cousin, Baby Keem, where in his featured verses, he's tended to get a bit silly. And yes, here too, getting silly, but still seriously catchy and hard.

Next, I wanted to highlight the fact that this album just has such a great flow to it, track to track to track, because there's so much contrast across the album, and each song seems like, in a way, a response to the one previous. As things next after "Squabble Up" smooth out with "Luther", which is very much a sensual romantic jam with SZA, loaded with storybook strings, twinkly guitars, a head nodding beat, not to mention very strategically placed vocal drops pulled right out of a duet featuring the great Luther Vandross and Cheryl Lynn, "If This World were Mine". And Kendrick and SZA's vocals just come together impeccably on this song.

Now, things get quite serious from here, less idyllic on "Man at the Garden", where once again, Kendrick is clearly being driven by that savior complex and also that desire to succeed. And while he does feel owed something for his efforts, he would also like to extend the benefits of that work to his mother, to his kids, to his loved ones, as you do when you are a family man. The track comes to a very grand finish with a lot of faster, intense rapping that is layered up much in the same way that it was at the finish of "Meet the Grahams". It's also important to note that much of the beat and the chord progression on this track feels like a very conscious nod to Nas's "One Mic", but it's clearly buried up enough to the point where it's not a cover or a redo or anything like that. It's really Kendrick making the case for himself in a lot of ways, showing us that he has the capacity to live up to the greatness that his forefathers, that the pioneers of the golden age of rap before him set.

And while I do think there is an argument to be made that this track could read as really quite pretentious on Kendrick's part, I don't know if there's anyone in his generation that is as effectively able to make the case he's making for himself on this track as well as he is.

We head back into banger territory in the tracklist on "Hey Now", which features another minimal beat. It's super bassy, lots of eerie, rhythmic scraping in the background that somehow just works. "Hey now, say now / I'm all about my Yen / Big Faced Buddha / Get my peace from within." So many snappy turns of phrase on this track. A slick and colorful delivery, which Kendrick turns the energy up on in the second verse. Also, the intergalactic synth bridge and the vocal harmonies on the bridge are incredible. It's amazing to hear this song build from this very dark and grimy place to something that is really quite intergalactic and harmonious.

Beyond this, we move into a very strong centerpiece for the album, "Reincarnated". Now, if I wanted to, I feel like I could do an entire video on this single track alone between the various references throughout the track, the narrative layers, the concept. Also right out of the gate, the beat and flow on this song is a retooling of a classic Tupac and Outlawz track. Like with that Nas "One Mic" callback, Kendrick seems to just really be feeling himself, feeling the capacity to borrow from a great who he holds in such high regard as Tupac and take that track and just elevate it to a totally different place conceptually, as he gives us the life stories, in a sense, of these pioneering musical figures – one,a rhythm and blues artist, another presumably Billie Holiday, given the specifics of when and where and the heroine addiction narrative.

In each of these stories, we see these figures being undone by their vices and by their greed, which their fame and their success allowed them to indulge in. Fast forward to present day where we have Kendrick Lamar, who very much sees his talents and abilities and influence as something that is being reincarnated within himself. Also, keep in mind, once again, we are doing a Tupac callback here. Kendrick explores this dynamic within himself, again, and plays it out through this conversation with God, where he explains that he has very good intentions with everything that he does, but God calls him out on a bunch of faults that he doesn't even seem to be fully aware of or convinced of.

Now, to be clear, Kendrick does portray himself on this song as somebody who has his problems and has his shortcomings. I think the greater point of this song is, honestly, that he feels like he is being called upon to essentially play out this same role in a way where he's been given this gift or this golden opportunity, and we're still sitting here and waiting to see whether or not it manifestsates in his self-destruction. While Kendrick does end the song off on a strong bar, in so many ways, this story is still being written.

Now, after getting heady and conceptual, we go into "TV Off", which honestly is a lot like "Not Like Us", and that's an understatement. It feels like Kendrick is giving us a different message in the same "Not Like Us" font. It's a bizarro version of the song. It's still produced by DJ Mustard, but it's very much a banger. The track has so many explosive moments and quotables. "All they ever wanted was a black grand national / Fuck being rational / Give them what they asked for." More smooth, effortless, low-key charisma, and the beat switch on the back end that leads into the iconic Mustard scream, which everybody has been copying all over the internet. The track is just a nonstop hype train, and proof that Kendrick can do another victory lap and also write a banger that isn't outright a diss. And it still catches on. People still repeat parts of it. People still freak out over it.

Because if there was any prevailing criticism of "Not Like Us" when it dropped and people saw the success, stress of it, it's that, Oh, well, the song wouldn't be as popular. People wouldn't like it as much. People wouldn't be having as much fun with it if it weren't a diss track.

Well, here's like, nearly the same song, but not a diss. And it still goes hard as fuck.

After this, we cool down with the song "Dodger Blue", which is like a very chill, melodic late night drive anthem with a smattering of different hi-hat tones and patterns, splashy delays, a fat, fat, fat synth bass line, too, that sounds amazing. There are some throwback R&B touches as well. It's just an absolute vibe, really the vibe-iest track on the entire record. And honestly, I think the only thing that makes it "eh" is that it could have been longer. It actually could have been another minute or so longer. The song Peekaboo is also quiet and skeletal, but it's taking things in a much more grim direction. I love the hurried refrain that is It's like a meta-commentary in and of itself. It's like, Kendrick is essentially coming on here to make a nonsense, bullshit-type track that doesn't really say or communicate much as a means of making fun of other rap music that also doesn't communicate much. But still, even as Kendrick is saying nothing, it's still going to get stuck in your head. It's still going to make you laugh. He's still going to make a point or two like, Why are you acting hard on IG Live? Isn't that silly? Also, the type of shit I'm on you wouldn't understand. It sounds like something out of an old Lil B song or Super Hot Fire sketch. And with LA Rapper Eze Chike, Kendrick gets more trade in that are, again, full of chemistry and very catchy.

Following this, we have another track that is like another cheeky little allusion to the beef that just went down between Kendrick and Drake. That would be the Heart Part 6, which is this ongoing song and single series that, famously so far, hasn't usually typically featured in the main course of any Kendrick record up until this point. But he's putting it right toward the end on this album because if you remember in this series of tracks that were disses and traded back and forth between Kendrick and Drake, Drake's final response to Kendrick was titled The Hard Part 6. It was obviously his own funny little way of being like, Well, I'm going to use your own song, series, idea, title thing against you, which admirable move. The track ended up being trash, and it was clear that His heart wasn't really in the song, and it ended up not really doing much. But now, Kendrick is very much taking the opportunity to do his own Heart Part 6. Yeah, he pretty much sidesteps any drama beyond the title being his here, claiming it, reclaiming it. Essentially, it tells a really beautiful slice of life story about how he came up originally as a rapper in that TDE Ecosystem, his former label Top Dog Entertainment.

He's mentioning Punch and Ab Soul and Schoolboy Q and J Rock. Also, producer Soundwave, whose fingerprints are all over this new record as well. This was a really important fail to tell because these are intimate details of this time, this era in Kendrick's life that we haven't gotten a lot of peeks into up until this point outside of interviews here and there. It's just significant, I think, to frame things in a way that gets people to understand that Kendrick, while he is often seen as that guy, that one guy, his Fame and his success isn't owed simply to him. It took a lot of other people influencing him and inspiring him and supporting him to get him to this point. The title track on the record is this wild ass posse cut featuring a bunch of LA guys over this instrumental that is just total madness. It sounds like getting wasted and using fruity loops for the first time. There's an absolutely nutty vocal mix on this track, too. The bass is just overbearing and the groove is very odd. There's some rushes of strings, too. Really, the wrapping flows over it is so confident and so steady that it makes up for it and brings some order to the chaos.

I think it's my least favorite track on the album, but it is a genuinely ballsy and unhinged effort that despite it being a little unpalatable, I still admire it. Then there's Gloria, the very grand and personal finisher for the record, where in so many words, to put it very simply, Basically, Kendrick essentially writes about his writing process, his pen, as it were, and details his relationship with that as if it was a personal or a romantic connection with another person. There are some issues there. There's highs and lows. There's maybe even a bit of a dependency. It may not be the healthiest of relationships, but it's gotten him to where he is today. It's always been there for him and been there with him no matter what he was going through. The track is just thoughtful and poetic beyond words. I know similar ones have been written in the past, but Kendra definitely puts his own spin on this formula. I think it's a track that is beyond words to an extent it really needs to be experienced for what it is. Yeah, no line hits harder on this track than when he says, Ain't no bitch like my bitch because that bitch been my pen.

That's this record, man. I I think it's great. I'm loving the hell out of it. It's impressive, it's hard-hitting, it's catchy, it's direct and to the point. It is loaded with personality and wit and charisma, memorable beats and choruses and Narrative Concepts, Passionate Performances, too. I really, truly think this is Kendrick's best and most focused and most cohesive work since TPAB, though the reasons I enjoy it are really entirely different in a lot of ways. And yet this new record over here is still incredible on its own merits. It's not like, Kendrick is an artist who's running out of gas, running out of steam, trying to recreate the same magic of a past success on this album. He's pushing forward. He's trying new things. He's experimenting and making waves in the process. I'm going to end this review here before I run out of goddamn breath, and I'm going to say I'm feeling a light nine on it. Transition. Have you given this album a listen? Did you love it? Did you hate it? What would you rate it? You're the best, you're the best. What should I review next? Hit the like if you like.

Please subscribe, and please don't cry. Hit the bell as well. Over here next to my head is another video that you can check out. Hit that up or the link to subscribe to the channel. Anthony Fantano, Kendrick Lamar. Forever.