Touching grass

GNX and narrow straits

GNX
Kendrick Lamar
pgLang/Interscope, 2024

I’ve still never heard “Not Like Us.” I’m aware it was the biggest song in the world last year. I shared this with a groupchat and was met with disbelief. Don’t you go outside? I do! I’m a gold medalist in touching grass! Where should I have heard this song, the supermarket? We’ve reached a point where, in order to encounter any piece of art, you need to seek it yourself — search keywords at the ready — and press the play button. Speaking for myself, I’m deeply uninterested in the internecine squabbles of 39-year-old men signed to the Universal Music Group. It’s nice someone knocked Drake down a peg; he’s the world’s easiest target. Does it matter?

Everything I’ve read would indicate GNX exists in the shadow of that song, which does not appear on the album itself. Bit of a structural flaw, but not my listening experience. If Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers was Kendrick sitting in his million-dollar bunker brooding about cancel culture, GNX finds him touching grass again. He’s placed himself on the cutting edge of L.A. street rap, immersing himself in the sounds and attitudes of his successors. Someone more cynical than I would point out this is exactly what Drake does, parachuting into a scene — Houston, Atlanta, Lagos — buying off the principals, and co-opting it for himself.

This sort of touristy genre homage is fair game in jazz, whereas rappers get accused of biting. Then again, Kendrick isn’t exactly a tourist when it comes to L.A. rap. My problem is I don’t like the rappers — Stinc Team, AzChike, Roddy Ricch¹ — Kendrick commemorates on GNX. I find them wishy-washy and cheesy. Around 2012 L.A. became an outpost of the most insipid rap music emerging from Atlanta, and twelve years later that imported style remains dominant. DJ Mustard, architect of the fidgety strip-club sound, has two production credits on GNX, but his fingerprints are all over. Do Californians, like, listen to this stuff in their cars?

I’m not saying Angelenos ought to rap like Warren G in perpetuity, but it sucks that a preeminent hip-hop city has been reheating another city’s shitty music for over a decade. L.A. rap was lush, smooth, and funky; now it’s none of those things, governed by simplistic melodies and chintzy instrumentals. The featured artists on GNX employ an extemporaneous approach, circuitous rhymes, seeking pockets between the drums. When Kendrick — rap’s knottiest lyricist, its most painstaking vocalist — appears alongside Dody6 and Siete7x, he’s liable to stoop to their level.

But here’s the thing — it’s an instinctive method, and Kendrick’s instincts are incredible. Whatever the drum pattern, he’ll develop an interesting relationship with it. The first Mustard track, “hey now,” is tantalizingly restrained, Kendrick shadowboxing the beat, compensating for B-minus punchlines² with a leering growl and ad-libbed hook. The energy boils over in the second verse, assuming a hood-gothic trajectory reminiscent of ICECOLDBISHOP’s South Central operas. Dody6, an undercard gangland rapper, is allotted just a few bars in the final movement: he’s garnish, an instrument, an entree into Kendrick’s world rather than vice versa.

It’d be lazy to call this a homecoming. I reject the “victory lap” framing³: Kendrick is so anguished, circling and revisiting scenes of his childhood, I don’t even know what that would look like. I’m intrigued by the labored delivery of “wacced out murals.” It’s not a bit, like the wino voice acting on 2015’s “u” — Kendrick has a million faces, and this exhausted persona is one. It’s a compelling yet directionless discourse, an airing of grievances; I cannot overstate how uninterested I am in his relationship with Lil Wayne.⁴

“man at the garden,” a limp “One Mic” tribute,⁵ suffers the same lack of kineticism. “One Mic” is a lot of things, but mostly it’s a narrative, whereas Kendrick’s song takes aim at vague detractors. This is why I never fell in love with good kid, m.A.A.d city, for the record. It’s guilty of the J. Cole Fallacy — the implication that, by invoking Illmatic and Ready to Die and Music to Driveby, you’re in conversation with them. Show your work!

But boy does GNX sound like a million bucks. Each song has a half-dozen credited producers; I have no idea what Jack Antonoff’s doing here, nor do I care. The Mustard stuff is dressed in clean Motown layers, yet nothing feels overly sanitized. The vocal engineering, the bounce of “squabble up,” the swing of “tv off” — I might need to invest in headphones, if only for the guitar kicks on “reincarnated.” “heart pt. 6” is the richest production, which makes Kendrick’s approach a bit perplexing. He raps it straight, rhyming on the snare, the only performance without angles or tricky corners. I’m not sure “luther” belongs on GNX, but it’s an impeccably choreographed ballad, vastly superior to 2017’s “LOVE.”

Given the ambition of Kendrick’s 2010s, the latest records are gravitational retreats: where Mr. Morale tunneled into his psyche, GNX is digressive street rap. But I can’t imagine not being entranced by its depths. “dodger blue” is like Blu’s latter-day odes to L.A., only better, murkier, more impressionistic.⁶ The cloying sweetness of good kid, m.A.A.d city’s back half endures in somber moments, a human, vestigial flaw. GNX is neither manifesto nor novel, but there’s space for quiet discursion.

Pop music is irreconcilably fragmented, yet we all agree on Kendrick Lamar. He’s an institution unto himself, and I don’t envy his position. He must embrace formalism and innovation. He cannot indulge his weirdest impulses — he will not be releasing a trip-hop album anytime soon.⁷ GNX is, like DAMN. before it, a triumph in narrow straits; if trailblazers inevitably lapse into homage, Kendrick’s dialed in. You think Jay-Z’s ever heard a Dody6 song? Who’s gonna tell Kendrick he doesn’t belong in the huddle?

DAMN. feels like a lifetime ago — I remember swapping clandestine leaks with friends like priceless contraband — but the feeling remains. Not a moment of GNX feels disposable. This is music that matters, damn it. I think that’s why listeners were eager to poke holes in Mr. Morale, an album with yawning holes of its own, because Kendrick’s on his own plane and has been for years. You could dislike it, but you ignored it at your peril.

1. The latter two appear on GNX.

2. “I put a square on his back like I’m Jack Dorsey” :/

3. No actually — The Ringer, Rolling Stone, and GQ all used the term “victory lap” in headlines. Some kind of SEO bait? Can we be serious?

4. Do rap fans actually care about this stuff? Like, this is what keeps you coming back? A 38-year-old millionaire’s veiled barbs at a 43-year-old millionaire? Have you tried watching a Real Housewives show? I’ll hang up, I’m hearing “Not Like Us” was the biggest song of 2024.

5. Oddly enough, neither Nas nor Phil Collins is credited.

6. Whereas Blu just like, names intersections.

7. I’m an untitled unmastered. man, subject for another blog.