Kendrick Lamar’s ‘GNX’ Is A Gladiator’s Buick-Chariot Victory Lap. Are You Not Entertained?

Only Kendrick Lamar could surprise-drop a new full-length album—like true surprise, Beyoncé-in-2013, out-of-nowhere-style—and leave fans wondering if he has more up his sleeve. It didn’t take long for the shock and awe of GNX, Kendrick’s long-awaited sixth album, to give way to George Bush memes wondering if a second project was about to hit. But while music fans are perennially greedy nowadays, there’s a deeper layer to the idea that Kendrick has another album; in this case it seems to be less of a hope and more of an expectation, because to some, this one project feels too slight by Kendrick standards to be all he has to offer. Which feels, inadvertently or not, more than a little unfair to GNX.

It’s understandable how some listeners could come away from it feeling less-than-full. At 12 tracks and just over 44 minutes, it’s Kendrick’s shortest album. There are no skits, no recurring references to “Lucy,” no heady titles, no head-spinning yarns about the day his father and eventual label boss first met—the project is literally just named after a very cool car. It’s a far cry from his last release, with its Broadway-esque title—Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, a double-album that featured a thorn-crowned Kendrick with his family on the cover. Even Damn., his most commercial album to date, sparked conversation about what it all means. There’s no room for interpretation this time; “All I ever wanted was a black Grand National” effectively Rosebuds the album title for anyone who expected there to be more to it. But at the risk of being one of those annoying people that shoots an artist bail they haven’t earned, should we maybe stop to consider if not having a big idea is indeed the idea here?

Let’s take the context of Kendrick’s 2024, the beef and its ensuing narratives, and the Super Bowl out of the equation for a second. Before any of that happened, I still would’ve bet money that Kendrick’s next album following Mr. Morale would be lighter, looser and more, well, upbeat. For one, it would be his first release under his own pgLang banner, and a little accessibility goes a long way towards firmly establishing a new initiative. (For comparison, Jay-Z’s first Roc Nation album was Blueprint 3—you know, the one with “Young Forever,” “Run This Town” and “Empire State of Mind”). And thematically, Mr. Morale was also probably Kendrick’s heaviest album to date. Even for an artist whose moves are as impossible to predict as Kendrick’s, anyone who drops a project with “Mother I Sober,” “We Cry Together,” “Father TIme,” etc on it is going to inevitably twist that Rubik’s Cube to something a little brighter on the next go-round.

And yes, in the midst of battling with the most popular rapper on the planet, debates about the nature of Kendrick’s music and the position it holds in the game have raged all year, mostly in the form of a lot of reductive, bad-faith takes that he takes a half-decade between every project and only makes joyless pseudo-intellectual political protest music that doesn’t bang. Early in the conflict, when it seemed like Drake had the upper hand, he goaded Kendrick to hit him with a “quintuple entendre.”

So it’s a jolt when, a few minutes into track 1 on the new album, the guy with the reputation for dense wordplay and hidden meanings snarls, “Fuck a entendre, I want y'all to understand this shit.” It’s a line that sets the tone for the rest of the project to follow: the bars are straightforward, their intent is plain and the Bompton accent is dialed all the way up. Reduce the glamor, reduce the frills, simplify the thought process and what you get is: a pretty fun, more-often-than-not singularly West Coast hard album that practically begs for replay the minute it’s finished. It isn’t a five-course meal begging for a dissertation, but it’s hardly fast food.

Maybe this is Kendrick in a bag similar to the one Paul Thomas Anderson found himself in after Magnolia—once you’ve proved multiple times over that you can take the big, heady swing, seeing if you can make the same impact within self-imposed confines of brevity and simplicity becomes the more exciting exercise. And as it turns out, Kendrick in that mode is still pretty compelling. “Wacced Out Murals” and “GNX” make me want to buy a lowrider just to cruise around at two miles an hour ice-grilling everyone at my local Erewhon. Then I’d take that Cutlass to the PCH for a nice sunset cruise set to “Luther” and “Dodger Blue.” And “Squabble Up,” “Hey Now” and “Peekaboo” are peak kneehigh-socks-and-Nike-Cortez tunes.

It’s disorienting to hear a Kendrick Lamar album that’s prioritizing vibes first, but hard to argue against when it produces earworm refrains like Get the fuck out my faaaaaace” or sunny hooks like those provided from SZA and Sam Dew. Then there’s “TV Off,” of course, the maximalist “Not Like Us” sequel that sees Kendrick and Mustard link up for a thunderous reunion that’s practically reverse-engineered to be the Super Bowl halftime closer.

It’s easy to describe a Kendrick project full of bops and bangers as him chasing the “Not Like Us” dragon, but the diss track that actually may be a skeleton key for GNX is “6:16 in LA.”—produced, like the majority of GNX, by Sounwave and Jack Antonoff. In retrospect, that song, with its lush Al Green sample and bars weighing Kenny’s search for higher elevation against his base indulgences to go to war, seems like a sort of prequel for what we have here. He won the battle, and he’s torn between flexing and doing something meaningful with the new cachet that victory affords. “6:16” found him atypically indulging in stunting and materialism, flexing about “buying yachts when [he gets] the fever.” It was so startling and unexpected that an alarming number of people were willing to take a baseless theory that he was rapping from Drake’s perspective on that part of the song as fact.

That tension, between taking those Mr. Morale therapy listens to heart versus unloading his wallet and his clip, persists on GNX, scored to the same vibe: Luther Vandross and SWV samples, “Sweet Love” blasting while Kendrick rides around thinking about all the people who have him fucked up. It comes to a head on tracks like “Man At The Garden” and “Reincarnated,” but it’s just as interesting as an abstract idea coloring tracks that are less on the nose. Kendrick gambled his career, took it to the brink and came away bigger than ever. His discography is full of albums that are the product of years-long reflection about his ever changing station in life; GNX is the project you make after a summer that got crazy, scary, spooky and hilarious.

He’s still processing the aftermath of the beef, but beyond run-thru-wall lines like “Before I take a truce, I’ll take em all to Hell with me.” That whole endeavor challenged—again, mostly unfairly—not only his commercial viability but his hometown bonafides. With an album that recenters classic West Coast sounds, and features from local spitters like AzChike, Peysoh, HittaJ3 and Dody6, he’s standing tall on the show of LA unity he preached over the summer. And I don’t think you don’t get a “Heart Pt. 6” mythologizing the history of TDE without the Black Hippy reunion at the Pop Out; a song kept from feeling too navel-gazey by the palpable guilt Kendrick feels about growing past them. (Also, referring to Dave Free as “my n-gga Dave” on the song whose title he took back from Drake is chef’s kiss.) There’s still room for genius and substance within simplicity: all he ever wanted was a black Grand National. This is the sound of achieving everything, and then wondering what to do with it. Alexander wept, Kendrick went home.

This whole argument may be rendered moot within weeks, months or even days of this publishing, because for once, the Reddit theories might actually have some weight. Namely: the song in the one-minute visual Kendrick released to herald the album’s arrival isn’t actually on the project, and in that clip there just so happens to be two Buicks. If there’s a complimentary part two waiting in the wings, by all means, load it up. But if this is just a more urgent and immediate palate-cleanser as Kendrick resets for the next phase of his career, then as my Jewish brothers and sisters say, dayenu.

After all, how does the second half of that Grand National bar go? “Fuck being rational, give em what they asking for.” Is that not enough?