Kendrick Lamar begins his exhilarating new album by complaining that somebody vandalized a mural depicting his face — a mural depicting his face in triplicate, in actual fact — on the facet of a Honduran restaurant in his Compton hometown. By no means thoughts that someone cared sufficient about Lamar to color the mural within the first place. What the 37-year-old rapper is pissed about is that this billboard-sized monument to his greatness was defaced.
That’s the power Lamar is tapped into on the deeply irritated “GNX,” which got here out without warning Friday morning, eight months to the day after he jumped into an epic feud with Drake that ended up lifting Lamar to new heights of business success and cultural status. (That the Pulitzer Prize winner vanquished Drake of their beef now goes with out saying.) In April, he scored a No. 1 single along with his look on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That”; in Could, he did it once more along with his personal “Not Like Us.” Lamar placed on a historic all-star live performance in June at Inglewood’s Kia Discussion board, then introduced that he’ll headline the Tremendous Bowl halftime present in New Orleans in February, only a week after “Not Like Us” is about to compete for report of the yr and tune of the yr on the 67th Grammy Awards.
But grievances abound on “GNX,” whose dozen tracks had taken spots 1 by way of 12 on Spotify’s U.S. High 50 by early Sunday and which is all however sure to debut atop the Billboard 200 subsequent week with one in every of 2024’s largest openings. In “Wacced Out Murals” he can’t consider that Snoop Dogg had the audacity to publish one in every of Drake’s diss tracks on social media — “I prayed it was the edibles” is his concern-trolling rationalization — and laments Lil Wayne’s public disappointment that Lamar received the Tremendous Bowl gig as an alternative of him. “Used to bump ‘Tha Carter III,’ held my Rollie chain proud,” he raps, “Irony, I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down.”
“Hey Now” is concerning the punishing scrutiny he faces as a celeb, whereas “Peekaboo” questions these making an attempt to tarnish his legacy. “I did it with integrity and n— still try hate on me,” he growls in “Man at the Garden” — a definite shift in outlook from Lamar’s earlier album, 2022’s knotty “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” the place he was riven by self-doubt after a decade of being held up because the voice of his era. Right here, in distinction, he’s daring anybody to say he doesn’t need to be admired (even when few past Drake have truly instructed that he doesn’t).
No matter its supply at this level, indignation stays a invaluable motivator of Lamar’s artwork; his writing and rapping on “GNX” are as razor-sharp as they had been within the brutal diss tracks he launched one after one other, Drake barely getting a second to breathe between them, this previous spring. As humorous too: “N— feel like he entitled ’cause he knew me since a kid,” he sneers in “TV Off,” “Bitch, I cut my granny off if she don’t see it how I see it.” Lamar is labored up about liars, about of us doling out backhanded compliments, about different rappers with “old-ass flows” losing area with empty rhymes. Certainly, what appears to make him angriest is the concept that an individual might triumph in hip-hop by taking hip-hop much less critically than he does. The album closes with a tune known as “Gloria” by which he spends practically 5 minutes extending an in depth metaphor that positions writing as the nice love of his life.
As keen as he’s to border himself as a singular expertise, Lamar fortunately shares the highlight on “GNX,” passing the mic to various younger L.A. up-and-comers together with Dody6, Lefty Gunplay, Wallie the Sensei and AzChike; within the title observe, he doesn’t even take a verse, merely becoming a member of Hitta J3, YoungThreat and Peysoh on the tune’s refrain. “Heart Pt. 6” recounts his origin story as a member of L.A.’s scrappy but shrewd High Dawg crew. After which there’s the lithe and funky “Dodger Blue,” by which he’s however a humble product of the oft-misunderstood metropolis that formed him: “Don’t say you hate L.A. when you don’t travel past the 10,” goes one line destined to be seen on a T-shirt or hoodie any day now.
Kendrick Lamar, in inexperienced jacket, movies the music video for “Not Like Us” in Watts in June.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Occasions)
Produced by a crew led by Lamar’s longtime collaborator Sounwave and the pop hitmaker Jack Antonoff — Mustard, who helmed “Not Like Us,” additionally co-produced two tracks — “GNX” is steeped in West Coast kinds and sounds; the music slaps, slides, bounces and shimmies. A number of songs trip extremely recognizable samples: In “Reincarnated,” a densely lyrical fantasy by which Lamar imagines his previous lives, the beat is “Made N—” by 2Pac, the late philosopher-braggart in whose contradictions Lamar has at all times discovered inspiration; “Luther,” a sensual duet with SZA, remakes Luther Vandross and Cheryl Lynn’s remake of “If This World Were Mine” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell — a stunning piece of lineage-making that calls to thoughts Beyoncé’s archival ambitions on albums like “Renaissance” and “Cowboy Carter.”
Even amid these plush textures, although, Lamar has retribution on his thoughts. “If this world was mine, I’d take your enemies in front of God,” he promises-slash-threatens, “Introduce them to that light, hit them strictly with that fire.” Be careful.