It’s hard to argue against the fact that, even before his latest album dropped, Kendrick Lamar dominated 2024. After releasing some of the biggest songs of the entire year in ‘Like That’ and ‘Not Like Us,’ not to mention winning one of the biggest rap beefs in history in the process, it’s been an unusually active twelve months for the otherwise elusive artist, making the five year gap between 2017’s ‘DAMN.’ and 2022’s ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’ seem like a distant memory. When better, then, to drop his next studio release? ‘GNX’ is, more than anything, a victory lap for Kendrick, even despite the bitterness and melancholy that surrounds him: though the applause may be starting to hurt our hands, we can’t help but congratulate him yet again… albeit with a few caveats.

‘GNX’ is irrevocably tied to its circumstances, wrapping itself up in the year’s turmoil and wearing it proudly: Kendrick isn’t hiding it, directly addressing the current hip-hop landscape on opener ‘wacced out murals.’ The song touches on Lamar’s perspective on the entire rap beef, as well as on the reaction to his Super Bowl announcement, showing him to feel isolated and disappointment in the response from those around him— Kendrick has never seemed more cold blooded than on lines like “I done been through it all, what you endure? It used to be fuck that n****, but now it's plural.” It’s an unusually resentful perspective, and one that’s far removed for the therapeutic musings of ‘Mr. Morale…,’ though Kendrick commits to his newfound place at the top of the hip-hop heap on ‘man at the garden’ as he explores a sense of entitlement in the face of all he’s done for the community and the industry, once and for all declaring himself to be “the greatest of all time.”

His more introspective side is far from gone, however— instead, it stands as a single aspect of the LP, rather than being the sole focus. The beautiful closer ‘gloria,’ featuring a wonderful chorus from SZA, appears to detail Kendrick’s love for his wife, though it’s revealed at the end to have actually been about his relationship with songwriting all along— going back through the track with this in mind, it’s amazing to see how intricately written every double entendre is. In other tender moments like ‘luther’ and ‘heart pt. 6,’ which sees Kendrick reclaim that song title after Drake used it for a particularly underwhelming diss track, Lamar is more focused on the people around him, treating his family and TDE with a great amount of respect: the old Kendrick is far from gone, even if he’s less afraid to show a darker side of himself this time around.

This isn’t a concept album though, nor is it Kendrick’s more lyrically intricate: on ‘wacced out murals,’ he even raps “f*ck a double entendre: I want y’all to feel this sh*t.” For a lot of its runtime, ‘GNX’ is about recapturing the excitement and infectious energy of ‘Not Like Us,’ leading to some of Lamar’s most accessible output since ‘DAMN.’ in tracks like ‘squabble up,’ ‘hey now’ and ‘peekaboo.’ The first of these has been teased since the ‘Not Like Us’ music video, and the hype pays off excellently as the song shows Kendrick at the height of his power, vocally riffing all over the beat without a care in the world: to no-one’s surprise, Kendrick’s rapping is as out-of-the-box and impactful as ever on his latest release, hitting you with some of his most ruthless flows and memorable vocal inflections to date. In a similar vein, ‘tv off, is a fun return to the Lamar/Mustard combo that made ‘Not Like Us’ so enjoyable, even if it feels a little more performative and inorganic this time. Seeing as the yells of ‘MUSTARD!’ are already catchy on across the internet, we can hardly complain.

Other cuts are less fun though, especially as Lamar dials back on the more intricate layering of his last album in favour of a back-to-basics approach that sees him leaning on his west coast heritage, and ‘GNX’ stands as one of Kendrick’s more inconsistent releases as a result. For every meaningful cut like ‘heart pt. 6,’ there’s a ‘dodger blue’— arguably the weakest melodic track on the album— and for every ‘tv off,’ there’s the title track, which feels completely slapped together and scattershot. Adding on a generally forgettable run of features (save SZA’s offerings on ‘luther’ and ‘gloria,’ which are both indispensable), ‘GNX’ is left with something of a hit-or-miss tracklist, even if there are undeniably more of the former.

No review of ‘GNX’ would be complete without a discussion of its magnum opus, however: ‘reincarnated’ stands as not just the best song on the album, but one of the strongest in Kendrick’s entire catalogue. Rapping over the beat from 2Pac’s ‘Made N*****,’ Lamar continues to berate himself for his past addictions, misgivings and transgressions, confronting himself for chasing fame at the expense of those around him. By the track’s end, he’s playing both sides in a conversation with God, attempting to justify his own actions in the face of an all-knowing deity before pledging to shed himself of the devil’s influence and “use my gifts to bring understanding.” Between the 2Pac homage, the return to Kendrick’s deep explorations of religion and culture and the effortlessness with which Lamar embodies such an ambitious song concept, ‘reincarnated’ stands as a shining example of why he, above any of his contemporaries, is the most discussed artist of 2024. This album may not how Kendrick at his absolute best, but this track certainly does, and our jaws have yet to leave the floor.

There’s a certain feeling of impermanence that haunts ‘GNX’: after all, fans have already began to speculate about Kendrick’s next album, potentially leaving this LP feeling more like a stop-gap release than the next evolution for such a talented and respected artist. Even still, there’s just enough meat on the bones to satisfy even the hungriest of fans, and this album’s more accessible sound may well usher in a whole new crowd of listeners, truly crowning Lamar as hip-hop’s would-be king. The fact that ‘GNX’ doesn’t quite stack up against the likes of ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’ or ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ is more a testament to how unbelievable those projects are: acknowledging this album for what it is, it’s overall a very strong crop of tracks, and a victory lap that Kendrick is more than worthy of at this point in his career.