Album Review: Kendrick Lamar—GNX

There are rappers and then there’s Kendrick Lamar.

There’s Hip-Hop and then there’s artistry.

Kendrick Lamar creates the latter in what I can only imagine is a Batcave several hundred miles below the Earth’s surface covered wall-to-wall in surveillance equipment so he can keep an eye on every active rapper alive.

We are witnessing one of those historic runs where a rapper dominates the year.

2024 belonged to Kendrick just like Chingy in 2003, Mims in 2007 and Ian in 2023.

Kendrick started the year by initiating one of the biggest rap beefs of all time by hopping on Future and Metro Boomin’s Drake diss track “Like That,”—where Kendrick challenged Drake’s (and J Cole’s) claim that they were the 3 best rappers in the world.

KDot was offended at the idea that they were all equals and needed to make clear he was a tier above them.

Then after a back and forth with the star of Degrassi, Kendrick ended Drake’s eternal happiness with “Not Like Us”, an anthem celebrating Los Angeles and calling out Drake’s love for stealing culture from hot artists as well as he and his friend’s preference for underage little baby girls.

Kendrick was then awarded with the Super Bowl Halftime Show.

And now he has randomly blessed us with a brand new album, GNX (pronounced Grand National after the old car), to further cement his claim as the greatest rapper of all time.

I knew it was the album of the millennium before I even pressed play.

Perhaps I should have been a tiny bit weary considering his last project, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, is still sitting in my “to-listen” pile alongside one of Chappell Roan’s non-radio songs and anything Joe Budden’s made (outside of Pump It Up, of course).

In fact, I wasn’t even thinking about Kendrick Lamar like that, until, well, he hopped on “Like That”.

But now, I am reminded of Kendrick’s supreme talent that couldn’t resonate with me when he attempted to make almost a Broadway play soundtrack on Mr. Morale—displaying levels of storytelling and vulnerability only 1% of musicians can tap into—but now I can fully understand and appreciate when he sticks to exclusively rapping about how much he loves California and how little he likes you guys.

Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize for DAMN, an album with such incredible depth and attention to detail it can be played backward and tells a complete story in reverse.

However, on GNX, he takes shots at Lil Wayne and J Cole so I mean there’s no need to compare this to any of his older projects.

GNX is the now.

It’s the moment

. Listening to Grand National is what it feels like to be alive in today’s society.

It’s been incredible to watch black LA culture get so much mainstream love. And no one captures that gritty gangbanging sound quite like Taylor Swift’s main collaborator and Lena Dunham’s ex-boyfriend, Jack Antonoff.

Lines like “Used to bump Tha Carter III, I held my Rollie chain proud/Irony, I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down” on Wacced Out Morals is what really makes GNX stand out as a superior project.

I, too, played Tha Carter III. Only the most creative minds have been able to connect to our humanity so effortlessly.

Kendrick Lamar GNX is a masterpiece, the greatest rapper of all time brings us a work of art only comparable to Michelangelo’s David.

“MUUUUUUUUUUSTAAAAAAAAARD”. This is what music is all about. Memes. Thank you, Kendrick, for creating the generation-defining album.

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