Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here. Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well. New Kendrick. Kendrick album. Kendrick album came out. Kendrick dropped. Whoa. GNX. Is that how you pronounce it? I'm just gonna spell it.

Yes. Legendary West Coast rapper, pgLang guy, Kendrick Lamar has a new album that he dropped seemingly out of nowhere with a bit of a teaser just before this morning. I have had no time to process this or think about it. In fact, at the time of shooting this video, I'm about to stream this album live. So, yeah, I haven't had a whole lot of time to do much of anything other than just get it up on my computer and decide to listen to a track-for-track reaction/review.

I have no other preamble or explanation or anything other than that. I'm just gonna put on the song "Squabble Up" because that's a song that a lot of people have been discussing and I guess we will see what it's got. Let's squabble up.

Oh my God. He's. This is insane. This is absolutely nuts. I mean, one, not only am I happy to hear this track, what was once a snippet to start the "Not Like Us" music video, and I'm glad it's seeing the light of day because you know that Kamasi bar, the flow, the beat, I mean, that was just fantastic. That was incredible. And to hear the entire thing sort of expanded into this, like Bay Area synthy, ultra groovy gangster rap bop with what is that vocal sample? I don't even know. It sounds like something from like some freestyle pop out of the 80s. Absolutely crazy stuff.

What I'm liking so much about this and maybe what I'm hopefully going to enjoy about the rest of this record is once more, it feels like Kendrick is really kind of going for it commercially. He's kind of breaking things down, trying to break things down in a way to where it's just as instantaneous, it's as direct, it's as catchy, it's as straightforward as it could possibly be. But still like full of character. Still, I would say, artful. Still has like a lot of personality and detail to it because the various flow switch ups and the refrains and the "Squabble Up" bits and the vocal sample drop and a lot of the clever bars throughout the track don't make this, I would say, a completely lightweight type of listen, not just sort of like a simple casual listen.

Reminds me of the way, you know, a lot of music used to be back in the day to where it would have to sort of like meet a certain kind of criteria and formula for it to appeal on a casual level. But when you dig into it a little bit further, 'Oh, there's actually like layers to this. It's not like totally vapid and meaningless and trash.' I'm sorry if this is not the most in-depth dissection off the bat. I'm really trying to get this done before I have to consume the entire album in a little bit. But look, I like the throwback West Coast, late 90s/2000s era sound that's coming through on this track. We've seen a lot of artists dabbling in exactly this in one way or another. Some of them progressing it artfully in certain ways like Vince Staples has on a handful of records here and there over the years.

Kendrick seems to be bringing his own thing to it and giving us a track here that frankly comes across as really, really dry. Not a whole lot of effects, not a big presentation, not a lot of crazy layers or anything like that. The production budget on this thing doesn't sound super high. I mean, this is like a track that he could have recorded in his kitchen if he so wanted. But honestly, that rawness contributes to an immediacy and energy that you don't necessarily get from Kendrick's headier, more abstract, and more experimental cuts.

That's the night and day difference. That's the contrast I think he's trying to make here. Because what we're used to from Kendrick these days are records that are very long, very layered, very conceptual, very thoughtful, with maybe like the most obvious switch from that pattern being DAMN. Though that album does obviously have a mix of abstract and experimental and multifaceted tracks, and also songs like "Humble" that are a lot more direct, a lot more catchy, a lot more geared for the radio waves and commercial viral reality right now. Between what he's put out in the midst of this Drake beef, "Squabble Up" and a lot of pretty short track lengths on this new project, it kind of seems like he's breaking things down a little bit.

Hopefully, we're going to get a lot of bops and a lot of bangers out of this record as a result. And, you know, this album may, if it's impactful enough, switch up a lot of people's misconceptions about Kendrick. Because a lot of his detractors and haters over the years, especially in the midst of this Drake beef, have continually attacked his commercial viability, talking about how his songs are boring and sleepy and so on and so forth.

If "Not Like Us" proved anything, it's that he can actually write a banger when he wants to, when he feels like doing it. If he's going full-on into that mode with a record of tracks that are meant to hit immediately, no doubt in my mind Kendrick is going to give us some viral moments on this album.

Alright, those are my thoughts. I'm going to leave it there. Let me know yours on this track in the comments. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano. Kendrick Lamar. Forever.