As far as creative direction is concerned, Californian superstar Kendrick Lamar’s discography has been marked by the rapper’s distinct ability to cancel out the noise around him about the kind of music popping on the charts and what the people’s ears are tingling to hear. Over the past decade and some years, this attribute has enabled Lamar to craft cinematic narratives detailing his life growing up in the blood-stained streets of Compton with facile storytelling. The West Coast hip-hop’s reigning avatar has progressed to carve verbal tapestries criticising America, celebrating and lamenting life as a Black person in society, and converting his gift of the gab to a confession booth in which he exposes all of his abasing skeletons as a man, father, fiancé, and celebrity.
Packaged in a glorious blaze of ominous production, tension-tightened songwriting ranging from industry critiques and self-affirming monologues to meticulously hidden references and easter eggs of subthemes, Kendrick Lamar detonated a surprise nuke in the form of an out-the-blue release over the weekend. Titled GNX, the non-classical music’s sole Pulitzer Prize winner’s sixth studio album is, in more ways than one, the fulfillment of the forerunning non-album single “Watch the Party Die” as well as a celebration leading up to the Superbowl in 2025, with features such as former TDE labelmate SZA and Roddy Rich as well as contributions from Sam Dew, Hitta J3, Dody6, Lefty Gunplay, Wallie the Sensei, Siete7x, AzChike, YoungThreat, and Peysoh.
Album Art | SUPPLIED
GNX is a West Coast-cum-hardcore hip-hop record fletched with influences of infectious hyphy elements, smooth G Funk, and polished R&B. Although the album lasts for 44 minutes with twelve songs, the album is Kendrick’s most concise production and songwriting-wise, superseding DAMN. (2017), featuring an improved approach in the implementation of chord progressions, melodic string treatment which either aid in creating smooth transitions or mood switches, and feature selections. With the help of long-time producer Sounwave – leading the collective expertise of Jack Antonoff, DJ Mustard, and Kamasi Washington, among others – GNX is a collection with a tough exterior cocooning the contents of a myriad of sounds. This makes Lamar’s latest a medley of club bangers and soulful ballads and an overt rebuke to detractors who pigeonholed him a snoozefest with no club-friendly song after Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (2022).
Opening the album with Spanish-sprinkled Deya Barrera vocal drops on “Wacced Out Murals”, the 37-year-old lyricist lays out the map of the album by letting everyone know with a dagger-sharp tone whetted by dissatisfaction that somebody had deigned to desecrate a mural of his likeness. Throughout the album’s starter, he sacrifices wordplay, his signature overly complex rhyme schemes, and intricate figures of speech, favouring intelligibility over intelligence. Rapping over gritty strings and dark synths, he rants about treachery, industry hypocrisy, what matters most in life, and the aftermath of him being announced as the headliner for next year’s Superbowl – with him going as far as nailing Lil Wayne’s head on the page with apparent disappointment.
Listen to “Wacced Out Murals”:
One of the album’s standout qualities are the quaint samples and their placements, which either accentuate the record’s subject matter or simply add that special sauce no different than a traditional feature would.
Sublime as the duet is between himself and singer SZA on the standout song “Luther”, it is Luther Vandross’s velvety cameo of the Marvin Gaye-written “If This World Were Mine” that ties everything together, elevating the chemistry of the former Top Dawg Entertainment mates while furnishing the song with a creative jink that aerates the track and gives it breathing space amid the tension. Barrera’s interstitial Spanish samples also cast a forbidding curtain of mystery on the opening song and “Reincarnated”, with the latter also containing drops from the legendary Tupac, whom the rapper pays homage to by emulating his flows as well as rapping as other personages, including Lucifer and God.
The LA rapper also gives Nas a practical tribute on “Man at the Garden”, with the metronomic beat and contemplative songwriting marked by an explosive climax conjuring the shape of “One Mic” from the Stillmatic era. Lamar plumbs the depths of gravity on the song with meditations of why he is a worthy candidate of all he has gotten; the song also displays visible character development, with the song sounding like a positive update of “FEAR.” from DAMN., a joint that is riddled with insecurities stemming from imposter syndrome. The “Euphoria” hitmaker also reclaims his “Heart” series from Drake with “Heart Pt. 6”, outlining why that rumoured Black Hippy album never happened while sharing words of wisdom to the youngins.
“jog my memory, knowin’ Black Hippy didn’t work ’cause of me
Creatively, I moved on with new concepts in reach.”
– “Heart pt. 6”
GNX, although a record with the seriousness of a courtroom mid cross-examination, is also a fun one. From extending the snippet at the beginning of the “Not Like Us” music video to a fully-fledged 90s-like banger with playful voice inflections in the shape of “Squabble Up” to yelling “MUSTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD!” on “TV Off”, Duckworth straddles the line between bogging the album down with wordy songs and simply making hits to shake one’s hips to.
GNX is, compared to his past albums, a more strategic and calculated release aimed at giving the album flight off the hype of 2024, what with the Drake beef and the volley of monumental disses. However, the album is a conceptual landmark no different from every predecessor which sees Lamar evolve into sure-footed man who knows his place in the world and the industry and is using every bit of his influence and lyrical prowess to address the wrongs of the culture while building himself as a family man and an upstanding person in the lives of those he has connections with.
Preview GNX:
