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Compton supernova Kendrick Lamar dropped his sixth studio album without warning on Friday morning. GNX is thrilling, kinetic, eminently bumpable and, above all else, very Los Angeles.
“Don’t say you hate LA when you don’t travel past the 10,” he taunts on “dodger blue.” He floats over a 2Pac sample (“reincarnated”) and transports us to Watts’ Nickerson Gardens projects (“wacced out murals”). He evokes the late Drakeo the Ruler’s flow on “hey now,” and the title track beat sounds like something ASM Bopster would chop up. The 80-pointers are for Kobe Bryant; the function unites Westchester, Gardena and King/Drew High Schools. There’s mariachi and G-funk in equal measure, and he salutes both Pirus and Kiwes.
Perhaps most notably, he takes us through the folklore of the city’s reigning rap apparatus, Top Dawg Entertainment and its Black Hippy crew. “heart pt. 6”—the authorized version, of course—finds Kendrick admitting that Ab-Soul was the early inspiration for his own pen game, that Jay Rock was the one to crack the door open, and that ScHoolboy Q protected his energy on the come up.
There are no listed features on GNX, but the whole album is dotted with guest spots. Outside of SZA, they all come from the Los Angeles subterranean. There is local Mexicano singer Deyra Barrera, who appears on three songs, “wacced out murals,” “reincarnated,” and “gloria." And a collection of rappers who are either on the come-up or have had their status as fierce underground bar slingers cemented.
For the uninitiated, here is your guide to all the rapper cameos featured on Kendrick Lamar’s GNX.
English (US) ·