GNX

GNX is the sound of an artist stepping into their power and the newfound freedom that comes without have to prove a damn thing. It’s a several-victory lap long coronation that serves as the perfect capstone to what was already a legendary year that shifted the entire rap hierarchy with just a handful of songs.

“GNX” is Kendrick Lamar at his most compelling — a mosaic that indisputably reaffirms his status as the most dynamic spitter the world has to offer.

GNX is a fascinating listen that’s as flawed as any of Kendrick’s previous albums.

GNX plays like a extended victory lap. None of the year’s singles are included, references to the beef are scattershot and subliminal but its embers suffuse every preening boast and putdown. There’s no need for big conceptual flourishes of previous albums. This time around Kendrick is the concept, his creative intensity manifested as weaponised normality. .... From thereon [“Wacced Out Murals”] it’s a rap masterclass. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.86]

Kendrick’s sixth studio LP is a masterstroke - exquisitely fuelled by his love of his home city of Compton and his rage at his storied adversary, Drake.

GNX is a pillar of reflective realness, a flag planted in the lineage of Black musical visionaries, a silhouette of the West Coast in the high beams of fame -- and Kendrick's most speaker-knocking set to date.

He’s not resting on his laurels lyrically, but we have entered a new phase where his output is reflecting him in a more raw sense. He’s just as inclined to bellow his producer’s name with blood-curdling intensity as he is to ruminate on his place in the rap game, and with results like these his position as “big me” is surely secured.

I think it’s safe to say that ‘GNX’ alone feels like another significant addition to Kendrick’s flawless discography. Not only shocking the world with the nature of its release, but also delivering a project to the same exceptional standard that we’ve come to expect from him.

In a discography as impressive as Lamar's, GNX stands as a major highlight, sitting comfortably in the upper echelon of a rarefied body of work.

Exhilarating. .... Whatever its source at this point, indignation remains a valuable motivator of Lamar’s art; his writing and rapping on “GNX” are as razor-sharp as they were in the brutal diss tracks he released one after another.

On GNX, the emcee sounds like he’s having a lot of fun even when he’s pontificating.

Even if GNX may be regarded as a “lesser” entry in Lamar’s mighty catalogue by many (if there even is such a thing as “lesser” in brilliance), it is a love letter to black culture. It never dodges a punch, never compromises. It’s both as far from the mainstream as a rap album can be, yet Kendrick’s most populist work. It’s a muscular and physical record, occasionally reserving the right to be as however banal as it wants to be, right before turning around and tearing into the culture.

While GNX is an excellent listen, it feels like a warm-up for the reinvigorated Compton rapper’s next classic trilogy. But now that Kendrick’s off the sidelines and back on the field, expect his next album to once again change the game.

It lacks that album's [To Pimp A Butterfly] audacious musicality, instead cleaving toward sleekly produced rap that platforms Lamar's fierce but graceful lyricism. [Feb 2025, p.36]

GNX’s pop bent and self-assurance recalls 2017’s Damn more than his jazz magnum opus To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), but the album’s mariachi-singer interludes and the nostalgic exegesis of Heart Pt 6 add up to another unmissable Lamar outing.

GNX, then, is a portrait of time and place, although those subtexts ultimately take a back seat to ongoing struggles with ego, and what Lamar ultimately wants to do with his generational talent.

If it isn’t the kind of grand, complex statement found on To Pimp a Butterfly or Mr Morale and the Big Steppers, GNX is nevertheless hugely impressive: compact but substantial, punchy but broad in musical scope.

And while some songs on this album get drowned out by the grandiosity of its goals, the project – and the man behind it – are as strong as ever. GNX is the blueprint for a new rap zeitgeist, and all we can do is hope that everyone gets the cue.

Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX” wrestles with rage, frustration and inner-conflict. All of these elements and the way the Compton artist binds them together are what makes it an intriguing and impressive album.

It all makes “GNX” less a coherent statement of purpose than a collection of approaches, a burning off of loose energy before something much more focused and contemplative. Call it the storm before the quiet.