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Together with his surprise-dropped “GNX,” Kendrick Lamar roars from zero to 60 sooner than a turbocharged ’87 Buick, sooner than you may shout “Mustaaaaard.” And waaaaay sooner than you may decode the dense biblical centerpiece “Reincarnated.”
Maintaining the identical vitality of his landmark Pop Out live performance 5 months in the past, Lamar surrounds himself with up-and-coming Los Angeles artists — from AzChike to Peysoh — and raps over thumping New West Coast soundscapes formed by his longtime producer Sounwave, together with Jack Antonoff and a garageful of different beat mechanics. He’s as soon as once more “possessed by a spirit,” sprinkling 2Pac, Biggie and Nas references all through and sustaining a me-against-the-world antipathy that features however extends properly past a sure Canadian: “I simply strangled me a GOAT” and “now it’s plural.”
Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Andrew Schulz, and even Fox’s Tremendous Bowl broadcast can’t escape Okay-Dot’s chaotic crosshairs. Right here’s hoping the refrain of “television off” — an pressing name to “flip this TV off” repeated eight occasions — confuses the lots throughout his New Orleans halftime present in February.
That is Lamar leaning into the identical creativity-juicing satisfaction, self-righteous anger and supreme confidence that fueled the Grammy-nominated “Not Like Us” and received his Drake feud: “I kill ‘em all earlier than I let ‘em kill my pleasure.” And but, as together with his first-ever hit “Swimming Swimming pools ,” even essentially the most club-ready braggadocio songs — and there are loads, together with the large “squabble up” and synth-stabbed Mustard manufacturing “hey now” — are slapped with a warning sticker. Introspection is baked into Lamar’s artwork. In “man on the backyard,” he’s surveying his kingdom and glory and declares that whereas “I deserve all of it,” “dangerously / nothing modified with me / nonetheless bought ache in me.”
At age 37, Lamar stays in peak type and stands alone within the rap world as a star who bridges generations with out chasing traits. He generates his personal gravity within the hip-hop universe. Pulling samples from the early ’80s — Debbie Deb, Luther Vandross, Whodini — he’s in a position to swap cadences and lyrical views mid-song with out ever dropping the listener.
Album nearer “gloria,” one in every of two tracks that includes former TDE labelmate SZA, is a wonderful celebration of the ache and energy of writing. Within the vein of Frequent’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.” or Nas’ “I Gave You Energy,” Lamar’s love story particulars a “difficult relationship” that listeners at first might imagine is about his longtime associate Whitney Alford, however seems to be devoted to his pen.
Whereas fastidiously structured, “GNX” feels a bit extra scattershot than Lamar’s historically concept-heavy studio albums. And there are hints that this assortment of 12 songs is extra of a “Half 1” or mixtape-type prelude to one thing extra formal: The temporary music video saying the album incorporates a snippet of a tune that doesn’t even seem on “GNX.”
No matter comes subsequent, the Pulitzer Prize winner has written one other thrilling chapter in what stays essentially the most fascinating longform story in hip-hop: an formidable and searingly gifted poet from Compton working by way of his — and the world’s — contradictions on the most important stage, without end discomforted by his crown. ___
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