Rap music is miraculous. You possibly can be staring down what guarantees to be a lazy Friday afternoon, the week earlier than a vacation, after which you could possibly look at your laptop and notice that the world has modified. The album that you simply’ve been ready on, the one that you simply didn’t wish to presume to anticipate, might all of the sudden fall out of the sky — the entire thing simply arriving in your telephone suddenly. Shit might get loopy, scary, spooky, hilarious. It’s that rarest of beasts: the good sort of emergency.
there goes my #1
— Father John Misty (@fatherjohnmisty) November 22, 2024
An important album is one factor. There are many nice albums. There are numerous nice albums that you simply’ll by no means hear, that the world won’t ever acknowledge. After which there’s the opposite sort of nice album, the sort that hits the earth like a meteor and instantly adjustments the composition of the environment. Should you’re sufficiently old, you may recall the times after Get Wealthy Or Die Tryin’ got here out. In sure cities, you’ll hear 5 totally different tracks from that LP everytime you left your condo. Tha Carter III was like that, too. The Blueprint. Late Registration. And now GNX, the sixth studio album from Kendrick Lamar Duckworth, is about to hitch that pantheon. An important album, any nice album, is trigger for celebration. However the different sort of nice album, the one which all of the sudden swallows up the world and turns into the instant topic of each worthwhile dialog? That sort of album exists on a special stage. It’s why we do what we do. It’s why we rise up within the morning.
it’s okay solely different occasions it’s occurred was 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2022
— Father John Misty (@fatherjohnmisty) November 22, 2024
Kendrick Lamar has been liable for this type of stop-the-world second earlier than. This yr, he did it time and again. About 13 months in the past, J. Cole invoked the thought of a “Huge Three” on a Drake music, and this awoke the sleeping dragon. Kendrick Lamar was off on a special journey. He disappeared for years, after which he returned with Mr. Morale & The Huge Steppers, a thorny and insular report about wrestling together with his personal demons and dealing on himself. He adopted that launch with the common pageantry — the mesmerizing tour, the main-category Grammy losses, the social-media silence, the enjoyable however rare collaborations together with his little cousin Child Keem. Kendrick Lamar was not taking part in the sport. He was letting the sport play itself. He was excluding himself from this narrative. However then one in all Kendrick’s friends dared to counsel that Kendrick might have friends, and that was sufficient.
The Kendrick Lamar/Drake feud was unforgettable spectacle, a gloriously petty cleaning soap opera, titans clashing on our computer systems for days at a time. At any second, you could possibly look at your telephone and be taught that this epic novel had one other chapter. Freddy and Jason have been preventing. You weren’t secure once you have been sleeping, and also you weren’t secure once you have been awake. This time, although, there was a decisive victor. Freddy’s severed head didn’t wink on the digicam within the final shot. As an alternative, one man went off to sulk, and the opposite reveled within the carnage. We’ve by no means seen a rap feud have this type of impact on the broader world: a #1 pop hit, a Tremendous Bowl Halftime Present headliner gig, a number of Grammy nominations within the largest classes. An Amazon livestream the place NBA stars danced onstage subsequent to little children in clown paint, throwing up gang indicators. Fellini shit. Antonioni shit.
Kendrick Lamar did all this with out releasing an album. He shocked the world, one music at a time. The final six months have been one extended victory lap, interrupted solely when Kendrick publicly questioned his personal path on one other untitled-unreleased Instagram drop. That victory lap doesn’t prolong to GNX. Kendrick’s earthshaking diss tracks don’t seem on this album. He may be on high of the world, however he clearly doesn’t really feel that approach. GNX is just not an album that rides on the fumes of an excellent second. As an alternative, it’s pushed by satisfaction, spite, fury, disgust. Thank god.
The label discovered this morning lol
— Z (@BrianZisook) November 22, 2024
The opening moments on GNX belong to the Los Angeles mariachi singer Deyra Barrera. She seems all through the report like a Greek refrain, howling operatic unhappiness and reinforcing the concept we’re witnessing one thing of huge cinematic scope. However when Kendrick Lamar first seems, he does it with this line: “Yesterday, any person whacked out my mural.” That’s his focus — not the truth that somebody painted a mural of his face on a Compton wall, however the truth that another person got here alongside and defaced that mural. As anybody who’s ever had a Twitter account can inform you, the disrespect stays with you a lot longer than the love. It stings, after which it festers. When all the things works proper, it would animate you. This time, all the things labored out proper.
On “wacced out murals,” the opening observe from GNX, Kendrick isn’t simply fearful about whoever fucked with that road artwork. As an alternative, he marinates and luxuriates in each perceived insult that he’s gotten from a rap legend. Oh, Lil Wayne is heartbroken that another person received to play the Tremendous Bowl in New Orleans? Then fuck Lil Wayne. “Used to bump Tha Carter III, I held my Rollie chain proud/ Irony, I believe my onerous work let Lil Wayne down.” Oh, Snoop Dogg wasn’t disgusted with the Drake diss observe the place he used AI to impersonate 2Pac and Snoop? Then fuck Snoop Dogg. “Snoop posted ‘Taylor Made,’ I prayed it was the edibles/ I couldn’t imagine it, it was solely proper for me to let it go.”
Hey, if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes. As a result of proper now, Kendrick Lamar is rapping. He’s in cobra mode — all tensed-up coiled muscle, able to pump lethal poison into the ankle of anybody who steps too near him. There’s nothing like a centered, pissed-off Kendrick Lamar. His voice somersaults frantically over these tracks, careening wildly from one circulation to a different with such adrenaline-charged immediacy that you simply nearly can’t imagine how sharp the writing is. Like each Kendrick Lamar album, GNX repeatedly switches modes, aesthetics, concepts. Like each Kendrick Lamar album, it refuses to take a seat nonetheless. This time, although, Kendrick Lamar is pushed by a unifying thought. In a single sentence, that concept is that this: Kendrick Lamar is the best of all time, and we don’t deserve him.
taking the lyrics of “TV Off” and actually holding house with that
— PAPPADEMAS (@PAPPADEMAS) November 22, 2024
Six months in the past, Kendrick scored his knockout blow with “Not Like Us.” That music wasn’t simply sex-pest allegations and condescending historical past classes; it was additionally some deep West Coast shit — Mustard beat, Drakeo The Ruler flows. Kendrick went again to the supply. It wasn’t N.W.A 808 booms or Continual synth-whines. It was the Southern California rider music of proper now, the sounds that stay geographically and culturally rooted at the same time as they conquer the pop charts. That was the start line for GNX. Kendrick discovered simply how efficient he will be when he engages with the music that’s just below the floor. Right here, he makes use of that information.
On “wacced out murals,” the churning action-movie strings give method to the sort of artificial bass-boom that Too Quick would’ve ripped up in 1988. On “squabble up,” he blacks out on slap-blap trunk-rattle thunder and Latin-freestyle roller-disco power. For “hey now,” it’s itchy menacing-whisper minimalism. The “peekaboo” beat seems like bing bop increase increase increase bop bam. The title observe sounds prefer it’s taking part in ahead and backwards on the similar time. The only best goosebump second on the entire album may arrive midway by way of “television off,” when the clipped strings dissolve into Viking-berserker horns and Kendrick screams Mustard’s title like he’s mad at God. On high of all that, there’s “reincarnated,” the place Kendrick honors a patron saint’s reminiscence with an impressed sample-flip.
Kendrick flipping this >>>
One of many best Pac songs ever pic.twitter.com/4fL1VIMQ8x
— Andrew Barber (@fakeshoredrive) November 22, 2024
I can not imagine the manufacturing on this factor. How do you retain this secret? These aren’t beats that somebody slaps collectively on a laptop computer after which sends over in a zipper file. Even once they’re chilly and onerous, the instrumental tracks are additionally lush and layered. Each music has a number of credited producers, together with some large California weapons: Mustard, Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin. However the album by no means appears like a jumble of too many types, and possibly a number of the credit score ought to go to the 2 names that seem within the credit of just about each observe: Kendrick’s longtime collaborator Sounwave and… hmm. Take a look at that. Jack Antonoff. Good job, Jack Antonoff.
nah jack antonoff harmless idk what guitar music twitter be speaking about
— brandon (@callenderdates) November 22, 2024
The samples and allusions have been chosen with actual intention. They find the album inside custom and lived expertise. GNX is known as after the ’87 Buick Grand Nationwide that Kendrick coveted as a child, and now he needs us to know that he’s driving round and bumping Anita Baker from his tape deck. Sure voices float by way of. SZA sings a duet with the ghost of Luther Vandross. SWV soundtrack Kendrick’s bittersweet ode to his previous TDE operating buddies. Sam Dew croons that he’s received his 50 on him, so don’t die tryin’ on this bitch. When Kendrick sings about seeing spaceships on Rosecrans, he appears like Fabo. When he turns relationship raps into elaborate personification writing workouts, he appears like Frequent Sense.
Different rappers seem on GNX, however none of them are apparent names. As an alternative, they’re LA underground figures: AzChike, Dody 6, YoungThreat, Hitta J3, Peysoh, Wallie The Sensei. Roddy Ricch is in right here, however solely as a backup singer. I assumed that was YG on the finish of “television off,” however no, it’s somebody named Lefty Gunplay. These are the voices inspiring Kendrick proper now, and he meets them on their wordy, guttural, instinctive stage. He seems like he’s dwelling.
Each Kendrick Lamar album combines anthemic bangers with considerate, expansive self-interrogations. I all the time desire the bangers, however there are not any indulgent momentum-killers amongst inward-looking songs on GNX. The unhappy and fond reminiscences on “coronary heart pt. 6” are genuinely gripping, and the Sixth Sense-level twist on the finish of “gloria” genuinely shocked me. The singsong lope of “dodger blue” briefly permits Kendrick to sound content material with the world, whereas “luther” glimmers like puddles within the solar. Even at its slowest and most ornate, this music is all the time funky. It all the time strikes.
“man on the backyard” isn’t the perfect music on GNX, however it may be probably the most telling. The music is a lush, moody synthscape that remembers the moments of Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” earlier than the drums come crashing in. Over that evocative sluggish boil, Kendrick retains coming again to 1 four-word phrase: “I deserve all of it.” He’s proper. Kendrick Lamar cemented his place in rap’s everlasting lineage way back, and the occasions of the previous yr have reminded the world of what he can do when he’s in his zone. Few folks would’ve denied him his flowers. However we are able to solely really feel intense gratitude for Kendrick’s detractors right this moment. They motivated him to make this.
Two songs into GNX, I knew I used to be listening to a basic album. Six songs in, I knew I used to be listening to a historic second. As I write this, GNX has existed for 4 and a half hours, and I’m able to inform you that it’s the perfect album of 2024 and the best work of Kendrick Lamar’s profession. Perhaps that preliminary euphoria will fade. Perhaps I’ll ultimately put all the things in sober perspective and concede that it’s merely a fantastic album. I hope not. Miracles ought to all the time really feel like miracles. Fuck being rational.
GNX is out now on pgLang/Interscope.
