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Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, took fans on a journey through intense personal growth. With his final project on TDE and Aftermath, he closed an important chapter and could have then stepped away from rapping to focus on his company pgLang. Thanks to a beef with Drake, however, Kendrick has awoken his competitive spirit and widened his focus to hip-hop and the music industry as a whole.
On the surprise track he dropped during the MTV VMAs, Kendrick declared, “It’s time to watch the party die” while running down the state of the culture. As it turns out, the song was just a precursor for his new album, GNX, which dropped on Friday without warning on pgLang/Interscope Records. The project maintains much of the aggression from his musical output this year, but balances that energy with moments of introspection and his vision for a better hip-hop.
Opening banger “wacced out murals” initially throws listeners for a loop with unexpected vocals from mariachi singer Deyra Barrera, but quickly moves into sinister synths and Kendrick expressing anger at a Compton mural dedicated to him being destroyed. Promising to “kill ’em all before I let ’em kill my joy,” he goes on to do exactly that.
He hits out at Cole for stirring up the Drake beef in the first place and then backing out in the lamest way possible, Snoop Dogg for posting Drake’s lame AI diss track, and even gets petty about his upcoming Super Bowl performance.
After grumbling about Nas being “the only one” to express public congratulations, Kendrick addresses the criticism over Lil Wayne not getting picked to perform in his hometown and distancing himself from certain people: “Whatever, though, call me crazy, everybody questionable/ Turn me to an Eskimo, I drew the line and decimals.”
Following a thinly veiled reference to Drake (N****s from my city couldn’t entertain old boy”) and a literal “fuck you” to hip-hop as a whole, an irascible Kendrick almost longs for the days he “stayed inside of my house.”