After a summer-long feud with Canadian rap and pop artist Drake, Kendrick Lamar hasn’t stopped his momentum, releasing his sixth studio album, “GNX,” without warning on Nov. 25.
Though there was no official winner in the feud, many listeners felt Lamar had won in a landslide, and from this album, it sounds like he agrees. “GNX” is a bouncy, rhythmic album that dives headfirst into the west-coast sound and celebrates the genre.
The album starts with intensity from the first track “wacced out murals.” The song spends over a minute building up to its full intensity, building suspense the whole way and priming the album for its energy and flow.
In his music video for “Not Like Us” this summer, Lamar revealed the first 20 seconds of the second track, “squabble up.” Interestingly, this isn’t the only connection between the two tracks, as the latter’s early verse structure and flow feels strikingly similar. About halfway through, it shifts into a call and response section with almost identical cadence to “Not Like Us.” Regardless, it’s still one of my highlights from the album.
My overall favorite track on the album, “luther” is a lowkey R&B duet with long-time collaborator, SZA. “luther” has such an entrancing flow and energy to it, and Lamar and SZA’s voices sound fantastic together. The chorus elevates the song even further beyond its already immense heights. I haven’t been able to stop listening to “luther” since I first heard it.
Lamar continues his string of great tracks with “man at the garden,” a mostly gentle track where he insists that he deserves everything that his career has brought him. He acknowledges the struggles and hardships he’s pushed through and celebrates what he’s received, continually returning to the refrain, “I deserve it all.” The last verse suddenly raises the intensity, with Lamar claiming his spot as the greatest of all time.
“hey now” did not do as much for me as any of the prior tracks. This isn’t to say it’s a bad song – the flow and rhythm still catch the vibe, and I really liked the handoffs between Lamar and Dody6 throughout the third verse. On its own, it is a good track, but it’s handicapped by its position in the track listing, between three of the best songs on the album.
The sixth track on the album “reincarnated” is fantastic. It’s incredibly introspective, and places Lamar in the shoes of two mid-century musicians to reflect on lessons learned through his past. In his final verse, he alludes to a connection between himself and Lucifer, seeking approval from God.
“tv off” also has similar sonic cues to “Not Like Us.” The first beat on the track sounds like an alternate take of “Not Like Us,” but this makes sense. Mustard wrote the beats for both songs, and according to an interview with Billboard, wrote the first half of “tv off” around the same time as the beat for “Not Like Us.”
“dodger blue” is another lowkey track, this time celebrating Los Angeles. He shouts out multiple neighborhoods, and collaborates with three artists from Compton, Wallie the Sensei, Siete7x and Roddy Ricch. It doesn’t do anything special for me, but I struggle to find anything actually wrong with it.
“peekaboo” is probably my least favorite song off of “GNX.” The chorus is incredibly repetitive; just the line “What they talkin’ ‘bout? They ain’t talkin’ ‘bout nothin’” repeated ad nauseam. It gets repetitive incredibly fast, but is also over pretty quickly.
Lamar immediately returns to the more laid-back energy of earlier tracks for the next song, “heart pt. 6.” Like the previous five parts of his “The Heart” series of songs, he takes a look at an important part of himself, this time reflecting on his early years in the music industry, and leaving his label. While it did not stand out immediately upon my first listen as one of the best, It wouldn’t surprise me if this ends up being one of the tracks people remember from this album.
Lamar follows “heart pt. 6” with the strangest beat on the album, the title track, “gnx.” The beat has an uneven, janky rhythm to it that only seems to resolve somewhat when the lyrics come in. The song feels like the most obvious sign of this album’s nature as a victory lap. The lyrics emphasize his perceived influence on the scene, returning to the refrain of “tell ‘em Kendrick did it,” or substituting his name for his features on the track, Hitta J3, YoungThreat, and Peysoh.
Kendrick Lamar ends the album with another collaboration with SZA, titled “gloria.” Originally, the song appears to be about a woman, before revealing that this woman is actually his pen. In it, he addresses his writer’s block, and rediscovering his love for the craft afterwards.
It’s difficult to see Kendrick Lamar’s name attached to a project and not get excited. His catalog is so heavily loaded with amazing albums, it is difficult to place it in relation to his other projects and fully grasp how good the album is. Although it sits relatively middle-of-the-pack compared to the rest of his catalog, I think that “GNX” deserves an 8.5/10, though it is far closer to a 9 than an 8.