Imagine, for a moment, a world where GNX arrived with no industry-shaking feud in its rearview. Kendrick Lamar could probably make an album like it at several points in his career, but there’s no doubt it’s a hard pivot from 2022’s contemplative and messy Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. As the surprise follow-up to a series of historic diss tracks, however, capping off a year that saw him knocking out the biggest rapper on the planet to be crowned the greatest (and released without warning but deliriously just in time to make many publications’ year-end lists), it makes complete sense. But you can’t ignore the fact that the artist who looked so nakedly inward on Mr. Morale is the same one who spent 2024 taking victory lap after victory lap. GNX could have been another one of those in album format, which is something the world did not need. What the record – snappy, invigorating, and tireless – manages to achieve is fuelling back our hunger while delivering something quite beyond any fan’s expectations.
The Buick GNX is both a symbol of Lamar’s success and a link to his past – the model he recently purchased is the same one his father used to take him home from the hospital after he was born – and he spends much of the album reflecting on his journey to the top. GNX is an infectiously celebratory album, but Lamar makes sure to remind us he hasn’t forgotten where he comes from. “Top used to record me back when it was poor me/ And now we at the round table for what assures me/ I guess my motivation was the yearning for independence/ Poured everything I had left in the family business,” he raps of his time with Top Dawg Entertainment on ‘heart pt. 6’, the latest in the ongoing series that Drake, in his final and arguably weakest response to Lamar, tried to flip against him. Whether he’s still conflicted is a different question: there’s little effort to reconcile past and present or wrestle with the contradictions of every role he’s supposed to represent. It’s all there, but it comes out in unabashed confidence rather than unwavering uncertainty.
Lamar gone from reminding himself that “you can’t please everyone” (on Mr. Morale’s ‘Crown’) to reassuring us, over and over again, that he deserves it all. (Although people have been quick to take those words at face value – there’s at least a hint of wistfulness to ‘man at the garden’, more of a manifesto than a personal record.) Only the presence of God – literally, on ‘reincarnated’, which also sees him inhabiting the lives of John Lee Hooker, Billie Holliday, and Tupac Shakur, once someone he could imagine “probably” relating to – could shake him out of place. GNX harnesses the bottled-up energy of the past year into one of the most immediate and concise records of his career, scrubbing away some of the heady poeticism that had a way of clouding his superstatus to render it, in fact, immutable. The thrill isn’t so much that something so great dropped out of nowhere, but in the way Lamar’s established greatness appears so sharply condensed.
GNX’s righteous fury, unfortunately, comes with a side of the kind of pettiness that made most of us glad the Drake beef came to an end. It might be one of the best songs of the year, but I’m glad ‘Not Like Us’ is not on here, even though its exclusion has only fuelled speculation about another Kendrick project on the horizon. At its best, the album keeps up the momentum without leaning too far into it; ‘tv off’ reunites Lamar with producer Mustard in triumphant frenzy to create a viral moment that feels like more than an imitation of ‘Not Like Us’. ‘heart pt. 6’ is far from a response to Drake, instead considering how best to funnel down his own impact, image, and generational talent, a theme that intensifies on ‘hey now’. That one also has Mustard on production, along with longtime collaborator Sounwave and his Red Hearse bandmate Jack Antonoff, who are credited on nearly every song – its bounce is as slick and menacing as Lamar’s delivery, which acknowledges we’re in banger territory while sneakily sharpening his pen.
But right from the opening track, ‘wucced out murals’, you get the sense that Lamar could have let the dust settle a little longer. (Though that would only give him time to address Drake’s regrettably timed legal actions.) He takes aim at Snoop Dog for sharing Drake’s ‘Taylor Made’ freestyle on Instagram and Lil Wayne for being displeased at his Super Bowl slot, which sounds like detritus as soon as he moves on; it dilutes the project’s significance by freezing it in time, especially since Lamar does have deeper concerns to parse out. More importantly, he’s here to entertain, getting things moving with the instantly catchy ‘squabble up’ before rattling off in different directions. GNX may trade the insular and introspective flows of Mr. Morale for better accessibility and more venom, but it’s not a course correction; without much to prove, he’s free to eclecticize his sound, which helps when the producers tend to manifest each style with clean, raucous precision.
The album not only covers more musical ground than you’d expect – careening from ‘squabble up’ to ‘luther’, a soulful duet with SZA that beautifully builds on a sample of Luther Vandross – but also finds Lamar gradually yielding more of it on the rapping front. Whether focusing his attention on the underground of his native LA is an admirable means of platforming up-and-coming rappers or securing his mainstream stature is up for debate, but it does add to the dynamism of the album, especially on the dizzying posse cut that is the title track. The most notable guest, of course, is SZA, who also joins Lamar on the closing ‘gloria’, whose titular character turns out to be – shocker – a metaphor for his own relationship with writing. It’s cut in the vein of Mr. Morale’s discomfiting ‘We Cry to Together’, though it lacks that duet’s raw melodrama. Choosing such a dependable collaborator, though, makes for a fitting conclusion – there’s a level of familiarity and even comfort between them that suggests this battle with self, inescapable even in his biggest glories, might, however inconspicuously, be a shared one. He may never come out on top, but he keeps at it, if only because no amount of money or accolades can compare to where his pen can take him. Lest he come close to forgetting, GNX is ultimately there as a reminder.