On 'GNX,' Kendrick Lamar Evaluates the Throne

Kendrick knows he deserves it all, and that kind of terrifies him.

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While you worried about democracy, Kendrick Lamar studied the blade. 

Friday, November 22nd started out like any other. It was cold here, my brother’s birthday, and two days after my own birthday. The first Friday of my 40s. Truth be told, it was kind of a rotten day on a petty, personal level, even aside from the runaway political minecart we’ve all been tethered to for the last two weeks/nine years/two and a half centuries. Where were you when it happened? I was getting ready to clean the house. And then my phone lit up with one text. And then another. And then pretty much every group chat I’m a part of, all with roughly the same news. The craziest thing you can imagine: “Kendrick dropped.” 

Now, to be clear, “Kendrick dropped” was a fairly regular text over the summer. At the height of the hip-hop feud, “Kendrick dropped” with more frequency than the postman rang, and each drop was newsworthy, another shovelful of dirt onto Drake’s coffin. But Friday was different. Kendrick didn’t just drop a new single or just a new music video or even a new album announcement. Kendrick dropped a whole album. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I hit the Spotify link. Amid the maddening and positively exhausting clamor and noise of the last few months, Kendrick Lamar has been in the kitchen, cooking something up with a handpicked selection of producers, collaborators and, I’m guessing, a metric ton of NDAs to keep the secret safe. He did that for us. 

It’s been an interesting few years for the relatively elusive Kendrick. He dropped Mr Morales and the Big-Steppers after an unusually long silence, and it was a twisty and odd-shaped tangle of contradictions and reflection. On it, Kendrick Lamar sounded a little like he was buckling under the weight of being Kendrick Lamar. It’s my least favorite album of his, although the live show was as unforgettable as any I’ve seen. Truth be told, after Mr Morales, I kinda wondered if his historic run was coming to a close. But then Drake kicked the hornet’s nest and something in Kendrick shifted. It was a petty, silly feud between two rappers, but Kendrick was writing with nitroglycerine in his veins. Drake treated it like a big dumb joke. Kendrick treated it like he was on a mission from God. Drake never stood a chance. 

Any other rapper alive would have rode that victory lap into an album release, but that’s not what this new album is. Not really. GNX is operating on a different wavelength than “Not Like Us.” Kendrick’s haters are not absent from the album’s scope, but they’re on the periphery, not really worth his time, beneath contempt. As usual, Kendrick’s main focus here is the man in the mirror.