Kendrick Lamar GNX LP

Rolling Stone 100 Best Albums of 2024 - Rated 21/100!
Consequence 50 Best Albums of 2024 - Rated 10/50!
Paste The 100 Best Albums of 2024 - Rated 19/100!

GNX is the sixth studio album by rapper Kendrick Lamar, released as a surprise album through PGLang and Interscope Records on November 22, 2024. Titled after the Buick Regal model, and a follow-up to Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (2022), GNX is Lamar's first album after his departure from longtime labels Top Dawg Entertainment and Aftermath Entertainment.

Lamar and Dave Free executive produced the album, which features appearances from AzChike, Dody6, Hitta J3, Peysoh, Roddy Ricch, Siete7x, SZA, Wallie the Sensei, and YoungThreat; Deyra Barrera, Sam Dew, and Ink provide additional vocal contributions throughout. Production was primarily handled by Sounwave, with additional work by Jack Antonoff, Mustard, Sean Momberger, and Kamasi Washington, among others.

The Compton rapper's masterful sixth LP is a surreal, hypnotizing, danceable trip through a hip-hop prophet's own ego death and immediate, braggadocious, finessing renewal.

A meticulous, versatile, hard-hitting masterpiece

The new LP is more accessible than 2022's complicated Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, harkening back to the pop of 2017's DAMN. and dabbling in bouncy West Coast club slappers and slick synth-pop across a relatively tidy 45-minute experience.

Two songs into GNX, I knew I was hearing a classic album. Six songs in, I knew I was hearing a historic moment. As I write this, GNX has existed for four and a half hours, and I'm ready to tell you that it's the best album of 2024 and the greatest work of Kendrick Lamar's career. Maybe that initial euphoria will fade. Maybe I'll eventually put everything in sober perspective and concede that it's merely a great album. I hope not. Miracles should always feel like miracles.

GNX is the blueprint for a new rap zeitgeist, and all we can do is hope that everyone gets the cue.

Kendrick delivers the kind of undeniable record that solidifies a generational run.

In a discography as impressive as Lamar's, GNX stands as a major highlight, sitting comfortably in the upper echelon of a rarefied body of work.

An easy contender for the rap album of 2024

This is lightning-in-a-bottle Kendrick. GNX is 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.