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

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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.”