By Nick Buckley
Kendrick Lamar, GNX
One of the funniest things to ever happen in rap unfolded earlier this year when Drake thought he stood a chance beefing with Kendrick Lamar. Starting in late March, the pair traded diss tracks, which reached an apex with Lamar’s Not Like Us.
Fire and funk: Kendrick Lamar’s on his victory lap on GNX.
Released less than 20 hours after Lamar’s ruthless Meet the Grahams, Not Like Us – with its viral “tryna strike a chord and it’s probably a minor” taunt – became Kendrick’s most successful solo song to date and his first to debut at number one, breaking Drake’s Spotify record for most-streamed hip-hop track in a day. Earlier this month, it was even nominated for a record of the year Grammy.
That rivalry’s been well and truly buried following the surprise release of Lamar’s sixth album, GNX. Not Like Us is missing from its tracklist (Drake doesn’t even get a name-drop on the new album), but GNX is Lamar’s middle finger in the rearview mirror.
GNX departs from the dark inner turmoil of Lamar’s last album, 2022’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. Spiritually, it’s Ye and Jay-Z’s Watch the Throne, an unashamed party record, released at the moment challengers to your crown have been left in a haze of tyre smoke. Here, it’s Lamar’s Buick GNX burning rubber.
The Buick GNX was released in 1987, the same year Lamar was born, when his father drove him home from the hospital in a Buick Regal. The same year, a Buick GNX Grand National beat a Ferrari F40, also released in 1987, in a race. Enzo Ferrari was given the nickname Il Drake by his rivals. Drake is a Ferrari owner. Ouch.
Kendrick Lamar: On the Pulitzer-winning rapper’s surprise new album GNX, Drake doesn’t even rate a mention.Credit: Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Lamar’s earlier take-downs drilled down on the cultural appropriation Drake has been accused of across his career. On Meet the Grahams, Lamar didn’t question Drake’s African American heritage, instead suggesting the Canadian’s safe Toronto upbringing disqualified him from fetishising drug dealing and gun violence, stories he said weren’t Drake’s to tell. On GNX, Lamar, who hails from the southern Los Angeles suburb of Compton, repeatedly champions his geographical bona fides.
This isn’t Lamar’s first ode to West Coast music history – on 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly he nodded heavily to Parliament-Funkadelic, the funk legends who inspired the West Coast’s G-Funk subgenre – but he continues to pepper it across GNX. The squelching synths on early highlight Squabble Up would sit happily on records by 1980s Californian electro pioneers like the Egyptian Lover or World Class Wreckin’ Cru, the first group Lamar’s mentor Dr Dre belonged to.
Elsewhere on GNX, Lamar directly daps up ’90s West Coast rap. Its funkiest moments, including TV Off, Dodger Blue and Heart Pt. 6, play like modernised DJ Quik productions. GNX isn’t a front-to-back home run like 2017’s DAMN and the energy sags at points, but its hydraulic sonics largely bang. Long-term Lamar producer Sounwave appears on every track, one more than famed Taylor Swift producer Jack Antonoff.
Foreshadowed as the intro to the Not Like Us music video, Reincarnated sees Lamar rap over the beat of 2Pac’s Made Niggaz. As with everything Lamar, his choice on Reincarnated is significant. One of Drake’s own diss tracks from the aforementioned stoush, Taylor Made Freestyle, used an AI-created mimicry of Tupac Shakur in an attempt to provoke Lamar, who closed To Pimp a Butterfly in conversation with a historical recording of Shakur on Mortal Man. Drake’s tone-deaf desecration of one of rap’s most-revered fallen sons (Shakur was tragically shot dead in 1996), resulted in cease and desist notices from the Shakur estate. Lamar restores Shakur’s honour by barely changing the beat, proving his ability to best Drizzy without doing much at all.
It’s tempting to close this out with more car gags, something about GNX leaving tread marks across Aubrey Graham’s career. But as Drizzy now hopefully knows, trying to match the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lamar is a fool’s errand. As Lamar says on the album opener Wacced Out Murals: “F--- a double entendre, I want y’all to feel this shit.”
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