USA - 2024
West Coast Hip Hop, Conscious Hip Hop, Ratchet Music, Hyphy
Turns out the children started to misbehave too badly. And when the night falls over Compton, who’s the one supposed to teach them a lesson ? The Boogeyman is awake, and he’s more than ready to slice some chinstraps. Kendrick Lamar has many nicknames, many personas, and the Boogeyman has always been one of them. But he didn’t embrace it until recently. In ELEMENT, Lamar said « Just say his name and I promise you’ll see Candyman ». On Not Like Us it can even closer with « Ceritified boogeyman, I’m the one that up the score with ‘em ». We’ve known Kendrick Lamar as a prophet, a drunk, a teacher, a child, an activist, a lover, a healer, but on GNX he finally puts on the Boogeyman disguise. He’s a mythical avenger who escaped children’s books to punish those who don’t respect hip hop culture.
« God knows / I am reincarnated / I was stargazin’ / Life goes on, I need all my babies » he raps on squabble up. It’s time. The clock hits midnight, there’s no more cooling down. Lamar has rarely been this hard-hitting : « I feel good, get the fuck of my face / Look good, but she don’t got no taste / I walk in, walked out with the safe ». With his newfound sound body and mind, Lamar gathers his peers (called « sergeants and lieutenants » on tv off ) on his side and goes to war. Because if GNX can be lush and playful, it’s also filled with an horrorcore aesthetic. The laid-back production on wacced out my murals and hey now convey a threatening feeling to the songs. Dody6 and Lamar develop this Halloween-like feeling on hey now when they say « I feel like Joker / Harley Quinn, Im’ in the cut with a blower / Ayy, shit get spooky, every day in October ». And then Lefty Gunplay ends tv off with « Shit gets crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious ». There’s no kidding around anymore, the Boogeyman is going to war.
« Yesterday, somebody whacked out my mural / That energy’ll make you niggas move to Europe / But it’s regular for me, that’s for sure ». The opening line of the album sets the tone. Lamar is not the type to flee but to face problems. He already did it with his personal issues on Mr Morale, now he’s ready to face the issues of his community. Later on wacced out my murals, the Compton rapper recognizes how his beef with Drake opened the door for a more global kind of conflict : « It used to be fuck that nigga, but now it’s plural ». The call for arms is amplified on tv off : « Few solid niggas left, but it’s not enough / Few bitches that’ll really step but it’s not enough ».
But Lamar isn’t here to wage a war that will take him out of the philosophy he started building since good kid m.A.A.d city. Instead, he tries to balance his violent words directed at a world he despises with words that will help peace grow in his neighborhoods. This inner struggle takes a concrete form on reincarnated where he discusses with God. « Tell me every deed that you done and what you do it for » He asks. Then Lamar talks about the institutions he paid, the people he put in the light, the peace he brought to L.A. God says « But you love war » and although Lamar refutes this accusation, a few songs earlier he used to say : « I never peaced it up, that shit don’t sit well with me / Before I take a truce, I’ll take ‘em to Hell with me ». As always, Lamar’s album is filled with contradiction. But that’s a tool the rapper uses to showcase his growth. So when God tells him « Your pride has to die », he doesn’t back down and instead answers : « Okay, Father show me how ». Lamar recognizes the need for a fight against soulless rappers and at the same time keeps spreading his inner peace outwards.
But the Boogeyman isn’t alone. And the Boogeyman isn’t the same as he was before. Mr Morale and his beef with Drake changed him. With a solid « emotional stability of sound body and tranquility », Lamar released GNX to defend his core values and the entire West Coast. Because that’s what he’s going to realize on this record, that his personal love stories, whether it’s hip hop or family, are indivisible. That’s why the title-track is filled with violent lines spoken by Lamar’s guests. Peysoh presents himself as a « murder man, singin’ murder music off a murder van » while Hitta knows « killer who was catchin’ bodies and not one fade » and YoungThreat warns cowards : « when it’s wartime, they hidin’ in the cut / Y’all had y’all chance, y’all couldn’t do it ». Even when Lamar plays a children’s game on peeakaboo, his vocabulary is military : « Peekaboo, 7.62s’II make ‘em plank / Peekaboo, poppin’ out, you better not smut my name ».
Kendrick’s ongoing war is a throwback to a consequent part of hip hop culture where music has always been used to overcome gang’s violence in order to shoot your opponents with words. Just like meet the grahams and Not Like Us, songs off GNX are meant to put Lamar’s enemies to the ground so they can’t stand back up again. « You know the last one figured he was Magneto / You play God, you gon’ get what you ask for » he says on hey now. Lamar points out one of the most problematic disease in hip hop culture : hubris. Hip hop has always been made to elevate its people, but not so it crushes those who stay at the bottom of the ladder. In this case, this war can be seen as retaliation against a system that’s already there and keeps growing. So there’s an emergency to act now : « I’ll kill ‘em all before I let ‘em kill my joy ».
Those two sides of his coin are represented on the song Luther with SZA. If the song samples the 1982 version by Luther Vandross and Cheryl Lynn, it was originally recorded in 1967 by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Lamar and SZA become a new symbol of peace and loving by walking in the steps of Gaye and Vandross : « I trust you, I love you, I won’t waste your time / […] I might even settle down for you, I’ma show you I’m a pro ». Lamar’s new transformation is all about giving the love he learned to feel for himself into something more universal. Even on a song such as man at the garden where Lamar claims all the rewards he deserves, the song’s movement is directed at his family in the end : « Put a smile on my mama / Good health and good karma / She deserves it all », « One hundred murals out in Compton // Remember me? I kept my promise / We deserve it all », « A better life for my daughter / Made my son take it further than his further / He deserves it all ».
Luther, reincarnated, gloria and heart pt.6, all these songs step out of the war to shift the focus. The Boogeyman grew wiser with the years and one of GNX’ lessons is enscribed in the sample used for heart pt.6 where SWV sings « Use your heart and not your eyes / If you got time, then I got time / Free your thoughts and watch them fly ». This song is also the best possible answer to Drake’s mediocre diss track The Heart Pt.6, mimicking Lamar’s series. The Compton rapper claims the series of songs as his own again by not mentioning Drake at all, throwing him into oblivion. Instead, he focuses on what Drake doesn’t have, his hip hop family, the friends he learned from, his mentors. At the wheel of his car, Lamar drives back through the roads that made him who he is now.
« When I was born, I came home from the hospital in an ‘87 Buick Regal [also called GNX] while my pops was bumping Big Daddy Kane ». In an interview with Complex from 2012, Lamar gives us a key to understand better the album’s title and artwork. But the picture is bigger than himself. Not only is GNX a tribute to his childhood and his growth in the Compton culture, but it’s also a tribute to his deeper and more ancient roots. On reincarnated, Lamar samples Tupac and recalls the acquittal of the four policemen who assaulted Rodney King in 1991 when he was four years old. Then he gets to the root of violence by exploring the lives of – potentially – John Lee Hooker and Billie Holiday. He impersonates the blues legend (also nicknamed the Boogie Man) and recalls : « My father kicked me out of the house ‘cause I wouldn’t listen to him ». These fatherhood issues travel to Billie Holiday on the second verse whe he raps : « My daddy looked away, he saw sin in me ». Lamar’s relationship to his father has been complicated. Now a father himself, reincarnated becomes a kind of testimony of male toxicity throughout history and how Lamar can finally break the curse (what he also did on Mr Morale ). But this time the curse isn’t personal, it’s cultural. So on the third verse, Lamar impersonates Lucifer himself.
« My father kicked me out the house / I finally forgive him / I’m old enough to understand the way I was livin’ ». The word « father » can be heard both ways, as a mortal or as God himself. And with the line « You fell out of Heaven ‘cause you was anxious / Didn’t like authority, only searched to be heinous », it’s clear that Lamar’s study here goes beyond his own character. And the only reason why he impersonates the Fallen Angel is to repair his wings.
Lucifer has always been identified with a profane kind of music in the Bible. And Lamar focuses on that perception in order to free music from its devilish affiliations: « I rewrote the devil’s story just to take our power back ». Now that Lamar resurfaces has a healed MC, he can cut ties with those who betrayed in recent history : « I used to bump Tha Carter III, I held my Rollie chain proud / Irony, I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down ». Then, still on wacced out murals, « Snoop posted Taylor Made, I prayed it was the edibles / I couldn’t believe it, it was only right for me to let it go ». Even if Lamar condemns their behavior, he doesn’t waste his time dissing them. Instead, Lamar is here to highlight other talented people. Many rappers from the West Coast are featured on GNX, and they all say their names so we can remember them. It’s Dody6 on hey now, and Peysoh, Hitta J3 and YoungThreat on GNX. And of course, Lamar brings the spotlight back on Mustard after his production on Not Like US with his insane eight-beat long name-drop on tv off.
GNX is also the occasion for Lamar to diss all the hypocrits using hip hop to make money and use their power to exploit others : « Since y’all pandering to choose a side, let me do it for you / Fuck your hip hop, I watched the party just die ». And Lamar anticipates the other side’s answer with heart pt.6, revisiting his origin story and shouting out all those who helped him become who he is now : Punch, RET, Moose, TEEZ, Sounwave, etc. But heart pt.6 isn’t only about the past, it’s also about the future. Taking example from Dave Free, « a producer, a manager, director and DJ », Lamar realizes that « now it’s about Kendrick, I wanna evolve, place my skillset as a Black exec’ ». Because in the end, if GNX revists the past and fights modern vampires, all in all it’s about his dedication to hip hop, and how he learned to respect the culture.
Traditionally, hip hop is a « She ». From the Lady Hip Hop featured on A Tribe Called Quest albums’ artworks to I Used to Love H.E.R by Common and Act Too by The Roots, many singers sung their love for their art and everything it meant for them in their lives. On Lamar’s 2015 Wesley’s Theory, he used to say “At first, I did love you / But now I just wanna fuck”. But this aggressivity melted away on GNX. Now hip hop is called gloria, and voiced by his longtime music partner SZA. “Whenever you want me, you got me ‘til the end of time” she sings to him. But his relationship to hip hop hasn’t always been easy : “She said one day I would right my wrongs and see paper / We started out young, lookin’ for some identity, made a thousand mistakes”. It’s hard to say if Lamar is only referring to hip hop, his inspiration, or his wife Whitney Alford in this song, but that’s the whole point.
In his growing fight against commercial hip hop, Lamar learned to respect the culture just as he respects his wife. Now they dance together in the Not Like Us music video, because this game is all about love, respect for the elders, respect for the newcomers, respect for the family, respect for your neighborhood. And those who don’t understand that, they won’t wait long before the Boogeyman comes for them. Thanks to gloria, Lamar is able to move from a “me” rhyme on man at the garden : “Keep my essence contagious, that’s okay with me / I’m crashing out right now, no one’s safe with me / […] More blood be spillin’, it’s just paint to me”, to a “you” rhyme: “Said you gon’ see other people if I didn’t grow with you / Wasn’t no more holdin’ them pistols in front of stores with you / You want reality, not tragedy, for sure, I get you”. Where Mr Morale ended with “I choose me, I’m sorry”, Gnx ends with “I see you, you see me / Both see what we want”.
There’s no use healing yourself if you don’t help others afterwards. Healing is meant to help you embrace your world, and GNX is the proof that Lamar more than succeeded with the quest he began on his concept album Mr Morale & the Big Steppers.
And beyond the features, GNX is filled with messages for the next generation of rappers. « It’s innate to mind my business / Writin’ words, tryna elevate these children » he raps on man at the garden ; « Tryna show niggas the ropes before they hung from a rope » on tv off ; « To all my young niggas, let me be the demonstration / How to conduct differences with a healthy conversation / If that’s your family, then handle it a such » on heart pt.6 ; and finallt, « I promise that I’ll use my gifts to bring understanding / For every man, woman and child, how much can you vow? / I vow my life just to live one in harmony now » on reincarnated.
Both in the text and in the form, GNX is an album made for Lamar’s community and everyone else ready to embrace the values of hip hop as it was preached by its original creators and all those who came after. Lamar saw a shift in the way we approach hip hop culture and decided to act. He stopped recording highly conceptual albums and a constantly boundary-pushing sound to find his place back into the clubs with a more straightforward and fun record, drenched in West Coast DNA.. “Keep my name by the world leaders / Keep my crowds loud inside Ibiza” he raps on man at the garden. Indeed, now Lamar’s music is everywhere, for everyone. It’s been a long time since the West Coast has been glowing this bright all around the world.
« God knows / I am reincarnated / I was stargazin’ / Life goes on, I need all my babies » he raps on squabble up. It’s time. The clock hits midnight, there’s no more cooling down. Lamar has rarely been this hard-hitting : « I feel good, get the fuck of my face / Look good, but she don’t got no taste / I walk in, walked out with the safe ». With his newfound sound body and mind, Lamar gathers his peers (called « sergeants and lieutenants » on tv off ) on his side and goes to war. Because if GNX can be lush and playful, it’s also filled with an horrorcore aesthetic. The laid-back production on wacced out my murals and hey now convey a threatening feeling to the songs. Dody6 and Lamar develop this Halloween-like feeling on hey now when they say « I feel like Joker / Harley Quinn, Im’ in the cut with a blower / Ayy, shit get spooky, every day in October ». And then Lefty Gunplay ends tv off with « Shit gets crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious ». There’s no kidding around anymore, the Boogeyman is going to war.
« Yesterday, somebody whacked out my mural / That energy’ll make you niggas move to Europe / But it’s regular for me, that’s for sure ». The opening line of the album sets the tone. Lamar is not the type to flee but to face problems. He already did it with his personal issues on Mr Morale, now he’s ready to face the issues of his community. Later on wacced out my murals, the Compton rapper recognizes how his beef with Drake opened the door for a more global kind of conflict : « It used to be fuck that nigga, but now it’s plural ». The call for arms is amplified on tv off : « Few solid niggas left, but it’s not enough / Few bitches that’ll really step but it’s not enough ».
But Lamar isn’t here to wage a war that will take him out of the philosophy he started building since good kid m.A.A.d city. Instead, he tries to balance his violent words directed at a world he despises with words that will help peace grow in his neighborhoods. This inner struggle takes a concrete form on reincarnated where he discusses with God. « Tell me every deed that you done and what you do it for » He asks. Then Lamar talks about the institutions he paid, the people he put in the light, the peace he brought to L.A. God says « But you love war » and although Lamar refutes this accusation, a few songs earlier he used to say : « I never peaced it up, that shit don’t sit well with me / Before I take a truce, I’ll take ‘em to Hell with me ». As always, Lamar’s album is filled with contradiction. But that’s a tool the rapper uses to showcase his growth. So when God tells him « Your pride has to die », he doesn’t back down and instead answers : « Okay, Father show me how ». Lamar recognizes the need for a fight against soulless rappers and at the same time keeps spreading his inner peace outwards.
But the Boogeyman isn’t alone. And the Boogeyman isn’t the same as he was before. Mr Morale and his beef with Drake changed him. With a solid « emotional stability of sound body and tranquility », Lamar released GNX to defend his core values and the entire West Coast. Because that’s what he’s going to realize on this record, that his personal love stories, whether it’s hip hop or family, are indivisible. That’s why the title-track is filled with violent lines spoken by Lamar’s guests. Peysoh presents himself as a « murder man, singin’ murder music off a murder van » while Hitta knows « killer who was catchin’ bodies and not one fade » and YoungThreat warns cowards : « when it’s wartime, they hidin’ in the cut / Y’all had y’all chance, y’all couldn’t do it ». Even when Lamar plays a children’s game on peeakaboo, his vocabulary is military : « Peekaboo, 7.62s’II make ‘em plank / Peekaboo, poppin’ out, you better not smut my name ».
Kendrick’s ongoing war is a throwback to a consequent part of hip hop culture where music has always been used to overcome gang’s violence in order to shoot your opponents with words. Just like meet the grahams and Not Like Us, songs off GNX are meant to put Lamar’s enemies to the ground so they can’t stand back up again. « You know the last one figured he was Magneto / You play God, you gon’ get what you ask for » he says on hey now. Lamar points out one of the most problematic disease in hip hop culture : hubris. Hip hop has always been made to elevate its people, but not so it crushes those who stay at the bottom of the ladder. In this case, this war can be seen as retaliation against a system that’s already there and keeps growing. So there’s an emergency to act now : « I’ll kill ‘em all before I let ‘em kill my joy ».
Those two sides of his coin are represented on the song Luther with SZA. If the song samples the 1982 version by Luther Vandross and Cheryl Lynn, it was originally recorded in 1967 by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Lamar and SZA become a new symbol of peace and loving by walking in the steps of Gaye and Vandross : « I trust you, I love you, I won’t waste your time / […] I might even settle down for you, I’ma show you I’m a pro ». Lamar’s new transformation is all about giving the love he learned to feel for himself into something more universal. Even on a song such as man at the garden where Lamar claims all the rewards he deserves, the song’s movement is directed at his family in the end : « Put a smile on my mama / Good health and good karma / She deserves it all », « One hundred murals out in Compton // Remember me? I kept my promise / We deserve it all », « A better life for my daughter / Made my son take it further than his further / He deserves it all ».
Luther, reincarnated, gloria and heart pt.6, all these songs step out of the war to shift the focus. The Boogeyman grew wiser with the years and one of GNX’ lessons is enscribed in the sample used for heart pt.6 where SWV sings « Use your heart and not your eyes / If you got time, then I got time / Free your thoughts and watch them fly ». This song is also the best possible answer to Drake’s mediocre diss track The Heart Pt.6, mimicking Lamar’s series. The Compton rapper claims the series of songs as his own again by not mentioning Drake at all, throwing him into oblivion. Instead, he focuses on what Drake doesn’t have, his hip hop family, the friends he learned from, his mentors. At the wheel of his car, Lamar drives back through the roads that made him who he is now.
« When I was born, I came home from the hospital in an ‘87 Buick Regal [also called GNX] while my pops was bumping Big Daddy Kane ». In an interview with Complex from 2012, Lamar gives us a key to understand better the album’s title and artwork. But the picture is bigger than himself. Not only is GNX a tribute to his childhood and his growth in the Compton culture, but it’s also a tribute to his deeper and more ancient roots. On reincarnated, Lamar samples Tupac and recalls the acquittal of the four policemen who assaulted Rodney King in 1991 when he was four years old. Then he gets to the root of violence by exploring the lives of – potentially – John Lee Hooker and Billie Holiday. He impersonates the blues legend (also nicknamed the Boogie Man) and recalls : « My father kicked me out of the house ‘cause I wouldn’t listen to him ». These fatherhood issues travel to Billie Holiday on the second verse whe he raps : « My daddy looked away, he saw sin in me ». Lamar’s relationship to his father has been complicated. Now a father himself, reincarnated becomes a kind of testimony of male toxicity throughout history and how Lamar can finally break the curse (what he also did on Mr Morale ). But this time the curse isn’t personal, it’s cultural. So on the third verse, Lamar impersonates Lucifer himself.
« My father kicked me out the house / I finally forgive him / I’m old enough to understand the way I was livin’ ». The word « father » can be heard both ways, as a mortal or as God himself. And with the line « You fell out of Heaven ‘cause you was anxious / Didn’t like authority, only searched to be heinous », it’s clear that Lamar’s study here goes beyond his own character. And the only reason why he impersonates the Fallen Angel is to repair his wings.
Lucifer has always been identified with a profane kind of music in the Bible. And Lamar focuses on that perception in order to free music from its devilish affiliations: « I rewrote the devil’s story just to take our power back ». Now that Lamar resurfaces has a healed MC, he can cut ties with those who betrayed in recent history : « I used to bump Tha Carter III, I held my Rollie chain proud / Irony, I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down ». Then, still on wacced out murals, « Snoop posted Taylor Made, I prayed it was the edibles / I couldn’t believe it, it was only right for me to let it go ». Even if Lamar condemns their behavior, he doesn’t waste his time dissing them. Instead, Lamar is here to highlight other talented people. Many rappers from the West Coast are featured on GNX, and they all say their names so we can remember them. It’s Dody6 on hey now, and Peysoh, Hitta J3 and YoungThreat on GNX. And of course, Lamar brings the spotlight back on Mustard after his production on Not Like US with his insane eight-beat long name-drop on tv off.
GNX is also the occasion for Lamar to diss all the hypocrits using hip hop to make money and use their power to exploit others : « Since y’all pandering to choose a side, let me do it for you / Fuck your hip hop, I watched the party just die ». And Lamar anticipates the other side’s answer with heart pt.6, revisiting his origin story and shouting out all those who helped him become who he is now : Punch, RET, Moose, TEEZ, Sounwave, etc. But heart pt.6 isn’t only about the past, it’s also about the future. Taking example from Dave Free, « a producer, a manager, director and DJ », Lamar realizes that « now it’s about Kendrick, I wanna evolve, place my skillset as a Black exec’ ». Because in the end, if GNX revists the past and fights modern vampires, all in all it’s about his dedication to hip hop, and how he learned to respect the culture.
Traditionally, hip hop is a « She ». From the Lady Hip Hop featured on A Tribe Called Quest albums’ artworks to I Used to Love H.E.R by Common and Act Too by The Roots, many singers sung their love for their art and everything it meant for them in their lives. On Lamar’s 2015 Wesley’s Theory, he used to say “At first, I did love you / But now I just wanna fuck”. But this aggressivity melted away on GNX. Now hip hop is called gloria, and voiced by his longtime music partner SZA. “Whenever you want me, you got me ‘til the end of time” she sings to him. But his relationship to hip hop hasn’t always been easy : “She said one day I would right my wrongs and see paper / We started out young, lookin’ for some identity, made a thousand mistakes”. It’s hard to say if Lamar is only referring to hip hop, his inspiration, or his wife Whitney Alford in this song, but that’s the whole point.
In his growing fight against commercial hip hop, Lamar learned to respect the culture just as he respects his wife. Now they dance together in the Not Like Us music video, because this game is all about love, respect for the elders, respect for the newcomers, respect for the family, respect for your neighborhood. And those who don’t understand that, they won’t wait long before the Boogeyman comes for them. Thanks to gloria, Lamar is able to move from a “me” rhyme on man at the garden : “Keep my essence contagious, that’s okay with me / I’m crashing out right now, no one’s safe with me / […] More blood be spillin’, it’s just paint to me”, to a “you” rhyme: “Said you gon’ see other people if I didn’t grow with you / Wasn’t no more holdin’ them pistols in front of stores with you / You want reality, not tragedy, for sure, I get you”. Where Mr Morale ended with “I choose me, I’m sorry”, Gnx ends with “I see you, you see me / Both see what we want”.
There’s no use healing yourself if you don’t help others afterwards. Healing is meant to help you embrace your world, and GNX is the proof that Lamar more than succeeded with the quest he began on his concept album Mr Morale & the Big Steppers.
And beyond the features, GNX is filled with messages for the next generation of rappers. « It’s innate to mind my business / Writin’ words, tryna elevate these children » he raps on man at the garden ; « Tryna show niggas the ropes before they hung from a rope » on tv off ; « To all my young niggas, let me be the demonstration / How to conduct differences with a healthy conversation / If that’s your family, then handle it a such » on heart pt.6 ; and finallt, « I promise that I’ll use my gifts to bring understanding / For every man, woman and child, how much can you vow? / I vow my life just to live one in harmony now » on reincarnated.
Both in the text and in the form, GNX is an album made for Lamar’s community and everyone else ready to embrace the values of hip hop as it was preached by its original creators and all those who came after. Lamar saw a shift in the way we approach hip hop culture and decided to act. He stopped recording highly conceptual albums and a constantly boundary-pushing sound to find his place back into the clubs with a more straightforward and fun record, drenched in West Coast DNA.. “Keep my name by the world leaders / Keep my crowds loud inside Ibiza” he raps on man at the garden. Indeed, now Lamar’s music is everywhere, for everyone. It’s been a long time since the West Coast has been glowing this bright all around the world.