With his surprise-dropped “GNX,” Kendrick Lamar thunders from zero to 60 quicker than a turbocharged ’87 Buick, speedier than you can yell “Mustaaaaard.” And waaaaay speedier than you can interpret the thick scriptural centerpiece “Reincarnated.”
Keeping the same vitality of his point of interest Pop Out concert five months prior, Lamar encompasses himself with up-and-coming Los Angeles specialists — from AzChike to Peysoh — and raps over pounding Modern West Coast soundscapes formed by his longtime maker Sounwave, along with Jack Antonoff and a garageful of other beat mechanics. He’s once once more “possessed by a spirit,” sprinkling 2Pac, Biggie and Nas references all through and keeping up a me-against-the-world aversion that incorporates but amplifies well past a certain Canadian: “I fair choked me a GOAT” and “now it’s plural.”
Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Andrew Schulz, and indeed Fox’s Super Bowl broadcast can’t elude K-Dot’s chaotic crosshairs. Here’s trusting the refrain of “tv off” — an critical call to “turn this TV off” rehashed eight times — confounds the masses amid his Modern Orleans halftime appear in February.
This is Lamar inclining into the same creativity-juicing pride, self-righteous outrage and preeminent certainty that fueled the Grammy-nominated “Not Like Us” and won his Drake fight: “I slaughter ‘em all some time recently I let ‘em murder my joy.” And however, as with his first-ever hit “Swimming Pools (Drank),” indeed the most club-ready braggadocio melodies — and there are bounty, counting the gigantic “squabble up” and synth-stabbed Mustard generation “hey now” — are slapped with a caution sticker. Reflection is prepared into Lamar’s craftsmanship. In “man at the garden,” he’s looking over his kingdom and eminence and announces that whereas “I merit it all,” “dangerously / nothing changed with me / still got torment in me.”
At age 37, Lamar remains in top frame (that breath control!) and stands alone in the rap world as a star who bridges eras without chasing patterns. He creates his possess gravity in the hip-hop universe. Pulling tests from the early ’80s — Debbie Deb, Luther Vandross, Whodini — he’s able to switch cadences and expressive viewpoints mid-song without ever losing the listener.
Album closer “gloria,” one of two tracks including previous TDE labelmate SZA, is a great celebration of the torment and control of composing. In the vein of Common’s “I Utilized to Adore H.E.R.” or Nas’ “I Gave You Power,” Lamar’s cherish story subtle elements a “complicated relationship” that audience members at to begin with may think is around his longtime accomplice Whitney Alford, but turns out to be committed to his pen.
While carefully organized, “GNX” feels a bit more scattershot than Lamar’s customarily concept-heavy studio collections. And there are insights that this collection of 12 tunes is more of a “Part 1” or mixtape-type preface to something more formal: The brief music video declaring the collection highlights a bit of a melody that doesn’t indeed show up on “GNX.”
Whatever comes another, the Pulitzer Prize champ has composed another exciting chapter in what remains the most captivating longform story in hip-hop: an yearning and searingly gifted writer from Compton working through his — and the world’s — inconsistencies on the greatest organize, until the end of time discomforted by his crown. ___
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