Everybody suspected a brand new Kendrick Lamar album was coming quickly — between a Tremendous Bowl halftime present slot subsequent yr and a haul of Grammy nominations for “Not Like Us,” the time was as ripe as could possibly be. But followers wakened Friday to the startling launch of “GNX,” Lamar’s followup to 2022’s ruminative “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.”
“GNX” finds him again within the lane of 2017’s “DAMN.” — a mixture of menacing, lyrically lacerating road cuts and dense, narrative-driven work. He hasn’t misplaced the scorched-earth spirit of beefs with Drake however now places that venom within the full widescreen scope of his life and work. His albums take a very long time to soak up, however this one additionally hits with ferocious immediacy.
Listed below are a a couple of early reads on the LP and the place it sits within the arc of Lamar’s profession. After “GNX,” it’s fairly arduous to dispute his declare to be the very best rapper alive.
Folks stroll by a defaced mural of Kendrick Lamar in Compton.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Occasions)
Restore that mural asap!
Whoever defaced the Kendrick mural in Compton have to be waking up stunned that their scribbling prompted the opening salvo for the file. “Wacced out murals” kicks off with the plaintive Spanish vocals of mariachi singer Deyra Barrera (who returns on “reincarnated” and “gloria”), and finds Kendrick surveying how his declare on the “best rapper alive” title has churned up blended emotions — “Used to bump ‘Tha Carter III,’ I held my Rollie chain proud / Irony, I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down,” he raps about successful the slot on the Tremendous Bowl Halftime present in New Orleans that Wayne craved. Nonetheless, he guarantees, “Put that on my kids’ children, we gon’ see the future first.”
Extra Mustard, however a lot Antonoff
After an absolute smash on the degree of “Not Like Us,” after all Kendrick was going to return to producer Mustard on an album deeply rooted in West Coast lore. The tense, brooding “Hey now” and strings-stabbing “tv off” revisit Mustard’s mixture of soul sampling and funk bounce. Nevertheless it’s putting to see simply how a lot Jack Antonoff is unfold over this album — the Taylor Swift common and Bleachers frontman is credited with manufacturing on 11 of “GNX’s” 12 songs, the second most after Kendrick’s longtime producer Sounwave. Antonoff has all of a sudden grow to be a major a part of Kendrick mythology; he not too long ago labored on the Drake diss “6:16 in LA,” which got here after Drake’s “Taylor Made Freestyle” that roasted Kendrick’s Swift collaborations.
Kendrick Lamar, posing for his new album, “GTX.”
(pgLang)
Disrespect Pac? This may be your final cease
If Kendrick was livid about Drake’s AI 2Pac disrespect, he totally avenged Pac on “reincarnated,” which flips his 1996 monitor “Made N—“ and absolutely nails Pac’s flow with the care and craft of a lifelong devotee. But the story winds back decades in a sort of past-life regression, where Kendrick imagines other versions of himself in music history, including an evocative verse as “a Black woman in the Chitlin’ Circuit … My voice was angelic, straight from heaven, the crowd sobbed … Had everything I wanted, but I couldn’t escape addiction / Heroin needles had me in fetal position, restricted.”
That is Sam Dew’s breakthrough
The LP doesn’t have many A-list visitor options, actually solely showcasing SZA on “Luther” and “gloria.” The true discovery for a lot of shall be singer-songwriter Sam Dew, an Antonoff and Sounwave collaborator within the band Purple Hearse, who lends some velvety textures to seven tracks. This needs to be an enormous breakout efficiency for him. The opposite function credit go to far more underground rappers together with Dody 6, AzChike, Wallie the Sensei, Hitta J3, Peysoh and Younger Risk.
The Coronary heart Pt. 6, Pt. 2
The very best pettiness is performing like your nemesis’ music doesn’t exist. Kendrick blew proper previous Drake’s trollish diss of (almost) the identical title along with his personal new monitor referred to as “heart pt. 6.” The music is often dense with novelistic particulars concerning the early days of Lamar’s profession — “Back when the only goal was to get Jay Rock through the door.” He laments how his success could have sophisticated his friendships in Black Hippy, and lest anybody suppose the Dave Free allegations on Drake’s “Family Matters” rattled Kendrick, he flips some phrasing right here to point out simply how far they return — “My n— Dave had a Champagne Acura / A bunch of instrumentals I freestyled in the passenger … For this little thing of ours we called TDE.”
