Kendrick Lamar - "GNX"
The GOAT would like his crown now, please
We’re here! We made it!
When Kendrick surprise-dropped this album, I was still a good half-dozen reviews shy of finishing the releases that came out in October. This is the 17th review to post since the album dropped, and I’m excited to finally get to talk about it.
Kendrick Lamar embodies a lot of the things that I’ve come to truly admire about Hip-Hop. It’s poetry, plain and simple; and Lamar is the modern Shakespeare. His reputation for skillfully layering multiple meanings into his verses led to Drake mocking him1 in “Taylor Made Freestyle”:
“Dot, I know you're in that NY apartment, you strugglin' right now, I know it
In the notepad doing lyrical gymnastics, my boy
You better have a motherfuckin' quintuple entendre on that shit
Some shit I don't even understand, like
That shit better be crazy, we waitin' on you”
The funny thing about this is that Lamar did it.2 In the title of one of the songs he put out about two weeks after “Taylor Made Freestyle” released. Off the cuff. No effort necessary.
Drake kicking off that feud served as a very conveniently-timed opportunity for Kendrick to remind everybody that he’s the GOAT without needing Eminem to say it for him. It certainly made his surprise album, GNX, an instant success. I should clarify, though, that when I say ‘conveniently-timed’, I don’t suspect any sort of conspiracy; I think Drake is just that big a fool. And it’s possible that Lamar hadn’t been planning to drop an album this year.
Kendrick Lamar is the sort of artist who thrives on spontaneity. He doesn’t need to spend months quibbling over word choice or phrasing — it just sort of comes together. It’s an absolute gift that I just took note of a couple of years ago with Mr Morale & the Big Steppers. That was my first Kendrick album, and it set a high bar. Say what you will about Kendrick’s voice; he knows how to wield words, rhymes, and themes. All of it was on full display, and it made for one helluvan introduction.
GNX is a different beast, though. Lamar’s 6th full-length album (and his shortest, to-date, at only 44 minutes) is Kendrick with his red up; Drake got him in a fighting mood, and then on September 8 gang members vandalized a mural of him in Compton, which is where GNX starts out, with intro track “Wacced Out Murals”. Something like a thesis statement for the album exists in this song’s second verse:
This is not for lyricists, I swear it's not the sentiments
Fuck a double entendre, I want y'all to feel this shit3
Basically, he’s saying here that the lyricism he’s known for is taking a backseat to standing his ground. Kendrick has made it clear that he’s never been in any gangs, but he still grew up in those same tough LA neighborhoods (two lines later, he says he grew up “Ducking strays when I rap battled in the Nickersons”).
At large, GNX doesn’t have any clear themes or throughlines other than Kendrick, himself. The album takes its title from a car: Kendrick managed to get his hands on a 1987 Buick Grand National Experimental, or “GNX” for short. The GNX was a limited-run edition of the 1987 Buick Regal, which was the final model year of the Regal’s Gen 2 iteration. Lamar has explained that his father drove him home from the hospital in a 1987 Regal; it’s the car of his childhood.
Taken together with the album’s strong West-Coast Hip-Hop slant, GNX is a musical self-portrait. A ‘this is me’ album with Kendrick leaning into his roots.
And taking on those he perceives as enemies, including a few kicks at Drake’s corpse, just for the fun of it.
We could spend hundreds of words discussing each and every track on the album,4 one-by-one — the victory lap that is “Man At the Garden”; the past lives and conversation with his late father in “Reincarnated”; not to mention how excited he gets about mustard.
The long and short of it is that the album is filled with absolute bangers with incredible lyricism. I don’t like the album, as a unit, quite as much as I liked Mr Morale, largely because the lack of strong themes is a bit disappointing; on the other hand, Mr Morale was entirely lacking in the ‘upbeat banger’ department, whereas GNX has several top-notch ones.
This is easily one of the best Hip-Hop albums of the year.
Rating: Blue
I’m assuming that nobody reading this spent the last 9-10 months on the moon and thus didn’t hear about the Kendrick/Drake feud heating back up. I’m also assuming that everybody is well-aware the Kendrick won. Hands-down.
Drake lost so hard that he’s suing his record label in straight up Pokemon “it hurt itself in its confusion!” meme fashion.
Quintuple Entendre, possibly more, right within the title of “6:16 in LA”, as noted in this Reddit thread:
6:16 is Tupac’s birthday, kendrick paying respects to him after what drake did
6:16 is Father’s day, we know how this relates to drake…
6:16 is the time that OJ’s (was it wife?) was pronounced dead. I don’t know much about the case, but regardless, whoever that women was. I thought this was a reach, but there’s a leather glove pictured on the instagram post. It’s definitely not a coincidence but I’m wondering why. Maybe just to bring attention to it? Drake couldn’t have been involved, he was like 7 or 8 at the time lol
Proverbs 6:16 - There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers. This definitely isn’t a reach either, Kendrick has been mentioning god multiple times in these disses and the fact that drake is a liar.
[Drake’s Euphoria show premiered on 6/16/19.] — highlighted in the top comment.
There’s also this article, which goes into more depth, but even with it posting the same day that the track released, I suspect the Redditors got there first.
He can say what he likes — his lyrics are still plenty deep, regardless of how hard he tried.
Yes, I’m copping out somewhat — I’m not getting paid to do this, I’ve got a huge backlog, and my wife would like my attention now.