On Friday, November 22nd, Kendrick Lamar dropped a surprise album titled GNX, about the Buick Grand National. There was little to no roll-out for this LP, apart from a snippet of “squabble up” at the end of the recently released “Not Like Us” music video. Most people, including me, didn’t even realize Lamar was in the process of recording new music, let alone about dropping a full-length album. It certainly came as a surprise and when I first heard about it, I found it hard to believe.
The release of the album wasn’t the only surprise that came along with it: on GNX, Kendrick strays away from the Conscious Hip Hop style of his last few albums for the most part, and in its place, he adopts the West Coast Trap genre. However, this new style wasn’t a complete surprise, as he had been making a lot of songs in the same style during his feud with rival rapper Drake. The most notable of these West Coast Trap songs was undoubtedly “Not Like Us”, which skyrocketed to fame the moment it dropped, and is definitely the most commercially successful diss track of all time. I’m sure that based on the success of this song, you could expect Kendrick to keep up with that same style, but I never expected him to drop a full-length album almost completely under that genre.
While GNX is centered around these West Coast-style songs, about half the album is made up of more traditional Kendrick songs. The catchy trap bangers and introspective boom-bap songs are all mixed together in the tracklist, which makes listening to GNX a very interesting experience of ups and downs. I personally really enjoyed the mix of genres and subjects within the songs, and it feels like there’s anything for any mood you’re in.
GNX also contains a lot of interesting features. Instead of getting uber-popular mainstream rappers on this new album, Kendrick elects to feature underground rappers from his hometown of Los Angeles. The only artists featured on this album that I’ve heard of are Roddy Ricch and SZA, the rest are all relatively unknown. I was very intrigued by this choice to feature so many underground rappers, but I’d say that they killed it. One of my favorite moments of the whole album is Dody6’s verse at the end of “hey now”, and AzChike on “peekaboo” saves the song for me. It was weird to me, but on a lot of the West Coast songs featuring underground rappers from LA, I preferred the feature verses rather than Kendrick’s part. I might even go as far as to say that the features were my favorite part of the album, or at least the West Coast songs. I think some credit has to be given to Kendrick for finding these guys and getting them on his album because they went off.
I’ve talked a lot about the West Coast element of the album, so now I think it’s time to mention the more conscious songs. My two favorite songs on GNX were “Reincarnated” and “Heart pt. 6”, two amazing boom bap tracks from a rapper who has all but mastered the Conscious Hip Hop genre. On “Reincarnated”, Kendrick raps about how he feels connected to African-American artists from the past, specifically John Lee Hooker and Billie Holiday. It uses a classic structure of his future songs, most notably “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” and the unreleased song “Prayer”, in which he raps two verses from other people’s perspectives, then the third and usually final verse is a reflection of his own. The structure of the song specifically does a great job of allowing Kendrick to convey how exactly these past artists have inspired him, and it all comes together to create a really great, deep song.
“Heart pt. 6” is another one of my favorite songs on GNX. It’s pretty similar to “Reincarnated” in the sense that it is a deep, introspective boom-bap track, but instead of being about a social issue or a grand topic, it’s about his early career with his old label Top Dawg Entertainment and how he came up in the rap game. It’s another great track, maybe not as deep but more fun to listen to than “Reincarnated”, although both songs are amazing.
This album has a lot going for it, but it also has its downsides. One of those is, in my opinion, the production. The album was executively produced by Sounwave, one of TDE’s in-house producers, and industry producer Jack Antonoff, who gained fame by producing tracks for Taylor Swift. The production isn’t bad by any means, but it just sounds too polished in a way. The songs don’t sound raw enough for a West Coast album, at least in my opinion. I was very surprised to see that Jack Antonoff executive produced this album, and I sort of wonder what it would sound like without him. The production was good, but nothing really stood out to me and the beats sounded sort of lifeless. Although I really enjoyed the instrumentals of all the songs produced by Mustard, West Coast Trap is his strong-suit and I’m very glad Kendrick went with him so much.
Overall, GNX is a very enjoyable album, and it has grown on me a lot since my first listen. The new style of Kendrick’s music was fresh and fun, the more traditional songs on here were amazing, the features were awesome, and the production was good for the most part. I think this is a good album, however, I don’t think it stacks too highly against the rest of Kendrick Lamar’s discography, but that’s only because he has such an amazing one, to begin with. I’d personally put GNX on par with the likes of Section 80 and Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, which is a pretty high bar. My opinion will definitely change as time goes on, but for now I do enjoy this album and I would recommend listening to it if you somehow haven’t yet.
Final Score: 7.8/10
Favorite Songs: “heart pt. 6”, “reincarnated”, and “hey now”
Least Favorite Song: “gnx”
