GNX was released to widespread critical acclaim and debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, giving Lamar his fifth number-one album.[3] It also topped the charts in numerous countries, including Canada, Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Denmark, and the UK, and top five in Poland, Nigeria, France and Hungary.[4][5][6] It was supported by three singles: "Squabble Up", "TV Off", and "Luther". Lamar and SZA will embark on the Grand National Tour in 2025 to further promote the album.
Background
Kendrick Lamar released his fifth studio album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, on May 13, 2022, to critical and commercial success.[7][8] After concluding The Big Steppers Tour in March 2024,[9] Lamar shared on social media that he had purchased a vintage, limited-run 1987 Buick Grand National Experimental (GNX),[10] a high-spec version of the same model that his father used to take him home from the hospital following his birth.[11][12]
Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers was Lamar's last album with Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE), to which he had signed in 2005.[13]Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers was also Lamar's first album with his own company PGlang.[14] Before his feud with Canadian rapper Drakere-escalated,[15] he quietly departed from Aftermath Entertainment and signed a direct licensing agreement with its distributor, Interscope Records.[16][note 1] Lamar released five standalone singles during the latest installment of their conflict, including the Billboard Hot 100-toppers "Like That" and "Not Like Us".[17][18] The rapper teased a then-untitled song in the beginning of the music video for the latter. Entertainment Weekly observed its inclusion and fan speculation that it could be included in his next album;[19] the song was revealed to be "Squabble Up".[20][21]
Rumors surrounding Lamar's forthcoming album began to emerge, with some being denied by close affiliates.[22] After announcing that he was chosen as the headlining act for the Super Bowl LIX halftime show,[23] Lamar surprise released "Watch the Party Die" on his Instagram account. Rolling Stone said that the track bodes well for his next album–"whenever it comes".[24]Dazed, on the other hand, predicted that he was gearing up for an "astronomical" era.[25] By October, Lamar's longtime collaborators Terrace Martin, SZA, and Schoolboy Q confirmed that he would be releasing new music.[26][27][28]
Composition
GNX consists of 12 songs and has a running time of 44 minutes and 20 seconds, the shortest studio album of Lamar's career.[29] Although no tracks from his feud with Drake are included, its sentiment "still looms over the album," according to Vulture.[30] It is a West Coast hip-hop album,[31][32] drawing on both classic and contemporary conventions of the genre.[33] According to Rolling Stone, the album is a tribute to Lamar's native Los Angeles, prominently infusing G-funk throughout its compositions.[34]
The regional Mexican music and mariachi singer Deyra Barrera is featured on and co-wrote three songs, both the opening and closing tracks as well as "Reincarnated", Lamar having discovered the singer when she performed at a Los Angeles Dodgers World Series game that he attended in 2024.[35] The production team played Barrera the instrumentation arrangements, and gave her a description of the emotions Lamar wanted to evoke throughout the album.[36] "Reincarnated" sees Lamar present himself in the perspectives of musicians John Lee Hooker and Billie Holiday[a] before the lyrics transition to him having a conversation with God.[32] "TV Off" features "clipped strings" that "dissolve into Viking-berserker horns" halfway through.[39] As the percussion of the second part fades in, Lamar is heard "animatedly" screaming Mustard's name; this has since become an Internet meme.[40][41] On "Heart Pt. 6", he recounts his history with TDE and the supergroup Black Hippy, acknowledging his role in the group falling apart due to creative differences.[42]Ben Sisario of The New York Times noted that it is an "implicit rejoinder" to Drake's diss track of the same name, which in itself was taken from Lamar's "The Heart" song series.[43] The title track, "GNX", is a posse cut with Los Angeles rappers Peysoh, Hitta J3 and YoungThreat. Lamar does not have a verse, instead providing a hook questioning "who put the West back in front of shit?"[32][44]
Promotion and release
On July 4th, 2024, a clip of "Squabble Up" was on the music video of "Not Like Us".
On November 22, 2024, Lamar unexpectedly premiered a one-minute teaser for GNX on YouTube and Instagram.[43][45] The album was surprise released through PGLang and Interscope 30 minutes later.[46][47]
On December 3, 2024, Lamar announced the Grand National Tour, co-headlined with SZA, in support of the album.[48] The tour is scheduled to begin on April 19, 2025, in Minneapolis and conclude on August 9, 2025, in Stockholm, Sweden.[49][50]
Upon release, GNX received widespread acclaim from music critics.[62][63][64]According to the review aggregator Metacritic, GNX received "universal acclaim" based on a weighted average score of 87 out of 100 from 22 critic scores.[54]
Various reviews considered it a victory lap for Lamar after his hip-hop feuds throughout 2024.[55][61][65][66] Critics who praised the album's tributes to West Coast hip-hop and Lamar's abilities to distill various elements to create a cohesive record include Exclaim!'s Wesley McLean[33] and Variety's Peter Berry.[67]Paste's Matt Mitchell upheld the album as a reimagination of rap's future and Lamar's past,[59] and NME's Kyann-Sian Williams was impressed by the warm storytelling that acted as a palate cleanser after the diss tracks and loathing that had dominated the hip-hop scene.[58] Williams contended that GNX is an "easy contender for the rap album of 2024",[58] and Tom Breihan of Stereogum hailed it as the year's best record and Lamar's "greatest work" yet.[39]
Many critics focused on Lamar's self-depiction as a driving cultural force in hip-hop. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian commented that GNX found Lamar at his most confrontational, "deferring only to God".[38] In The Line of Best Fit, Matthew Kim described it as "a concise statement of regional pride, braggadocio, and non-conformity", crediting Jack Antonoff's production for making the album feel "lush and expansive".[32]Rolling Stone's Mosi Reeves felt that GNX provided more than sufficient explanations for why Lamar is the "GOAT of 2024" but not answers to a bigger cultural question of structural changes in hip-hop, labelling the album "yet another treatise on hip-hop corporatism".[61] Concluding the review for AllMusic, David Crone made several claims about the album, calling it, "a pillar of reflective realness, a flag planted in the lineage of Black musical visionaries, a silhouette of the West Coast in the high beams of fame–and Kendrick's most speaker-knocking set to date."[37]
In a mixed review from Pitchfork, Alphonse Pierre wrote that the album's supposed authenticity was blemished by Lamar's "heavy-handed, brand-conscious narrative", highlighting the production that is "too clean and synthetic", although his delivery remained stellar and the musical guests were memorable.[60] In congruence, Will Hodgkinson of The Times shared his disappointment towards Lamar's self-aggrandizement that deviated from his intellectually provocative themes on past albums, despite the "frequently exceptional" production and flow.[68]Jon Caramanica of The New York Times considered Lamar's tribute to his California roots somewhat a retreat to his "comfort zone", calling the album "impressive but slight".[69]
GNX earned over 44.2 million first-day streams on the global Spotify chart, averaging over 3.6 million streams per song despite being available only seven hours prior.[104] It also simultaneously occupied the top two slots on the American Spotify charts, with "Squabble Up" being at number one with 3.272 million streams.[105]GNX became Lamar's first number-one album on the UK Albums Chart since To Pimp a Butterfly (2015).[106]
In the United States, GNX debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 319,000 album-equivalent units, including 379.72 million official on-demand streams and 32,000 pure sales, despite only being available via streaming and standard digital downloads. It crossed 500,000 album-equivalent units by the second week.[107] It marked Lamar's fifth consecutive number-one album in the country and scored the sixth-largest opening week of 2024, among all albums. Furthermore, GNX logged the year's biggest streaming week for any hip-hop or R&B album, the second-biggest debut streaming week, and the third-largest streaming week overall, only behind Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department.[108] All 12 songs from GNX debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, occupying the entire top five simultaneously.[109] Lamar is the fifth artist in history to monopolize the premier spots, joining Ariana Grande, Swift, Drake, and the Beatles.[110] Following Lamar's Super Bowl Halftime Show performance, GNX returned to the number 1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart dated February 22, 2025.[111]
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
Notes
↑ Pre-GNX releases under this deal hold the copyright notice "Kendrick Lamar under exclusive license to Interscope Records" which means that Lamar himself owns ultimate copyrights for those recordings; however on GNX, it says "pgLang under exclusive license to Interscope Records", thus meaning the deal was renegotiated, and Lamar's own management company, PGLang, is now set as an ultimate copyright owner for all official post-"Not Like Us" releases.
↑ Wood, Mikael (December 11, 2024). "The 20 best albums of 2024". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on December 11, 2024. Retrieved December 11, 2024.
↑ Aswad, Jem; Garcia, Thania; Horowitz, Steven J.; Willman, Chris (December 13, 2024). "The Best Albums of 2024". Variety. Archived from the original on December 13, 2024. Retrieved December 13, 2024.
↑ "Czech Albums – Top 100". ČNS IFPI. Note: On the chart page, select 36.Týden 2936 on the field besides the words "CZ – ALBUMS – TOP 100" to retrieve the correct chart. Retrieved December 2, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
