Few stories, the rapper of 2024 is Kendrick Lamar. Not just because he placed two number one singles in America, that is Like That with Future & Metro Boomin e Not Like Usand maybe a third will arrive. Not only because it has been announced that he will be the protagonist of the halftime show of the next Super Bowl. It is because he reshaped his public profile in the apocalyptic beef with Drake. He was a superstar poet, he became a vengeful fighter. By doing so, he shocked old fans who were left wondering how a Pulitzer Prize winner could go so far as to call his rival a pedophile.
The Drake vs. Lamar fight was questionable, all right, but it was also the biggest rap battle of this generation and Not Like Us the first diss track to be nominated for a Grammy as song of the year. It also helped Lamar shed the image of a good guy and representative of morality in rap, of his spiritual vocation, a pure expression of black creativity. As someone said, rap is a sport for gladiators. To regain the favor of rap heads alienated by records that felt like high-concept treatises like DAMN or Mr. Morale & the Big SteppersLamar had to prove that he can still (metaphorically) hit hard.
The crowning achievement of the season in which he proved himself to be the MVP of rap is the new one GNX where Lamar shows his two faces: the spiritual man who hears the voice of God within himself in Reincarnated and the tough guy who spews venom at real and perceived detractors in Wacced Out Murals. The latter has obviously already raised a wave of criticism on the Internet. Lil Wayne, to whom Lamar was chosen by the NFL for the Super Bowl, complained on philosophy the reference contained in the same track. It may seem strange since in the old mixtape C4 Lamar paid homage to Tha Carter III by Wayne, but as Kendrick says in TV Off“he feels like he has the right to do it because he knew me as a kid / asshole, I can cut off my grandmother's head if she doesn't see it the same way as me.”
In September Lamar posted an unpublished and untitled piece on Instagram (the unofficial one is Watch the Party Die). It's not inside GNX. On the other hand, there is Heart Pt. 6the last chapter of the saga inaugurated in 2010 (in their battle, Drake used that title for one of his diss). On the 90s R&B sample by Use Your HeartLamar talks about his long relationship with Top Dawg Entertainment and explains why he ultimately left to start pgLang. “Now it's Kendrick, I want to evolve, put my skills to use as a black executive.”
The new Lamar post TDE and post The Pop Out he is the unofficial mayor of rap, a tycoon at the head of an empire like Ice Cube, Snoop and Jay-Z. One who in GNX includes various lunges Not Like Usfrom Squabble Up to Dodger Bluehosts underground rappers (AzChike in PeekabooDody6, Lefty Gunplay singing like Lil Baby at the end of TV Off), calls out mariachi singer Deyra Barrera because Mexican culture hovers over Los Angeles, like it or not. The Buick GNX Regal of the title is the car in which Lamar's father brought him home from the hospital where he was born. The record is therefore a photograph of a time and a place, even if in the end all these subtexts take a back seat to the perennial struggle with the ego and what Lamar wants to do with his talent so great that it is generational.
For fans who appreciated the Kendrick who preached self-care and proclaimed “I love myself,” the one who called himself a hypocrite because he felt materialistic impulses and who experienced financial success in a problematic way, GNX it might seem like a U-turn, yet another treatise on hip hop capitalism. One actually wonders if we would have had a different Lamar, a slightly nicer guy let's say, if he hadn't been forced into the rap ring. It must also be said that he continues to question himself. In a piece that resonates Mortal Manone of the tracks of To Pimp a Butteflyimitates Tupac's voice as he describes two musicians, a dead bluesman “with my money, greed was too attractive” and a dead woman “with syringes stuck in me.” The third verse sees him arguing with his inner God. “You love war,” she tells him. And he replies: “No, that's not true”.
Ultimately Lamar promises to “use the gifts I have received to increase understanding.” And if instead the public of rap heads would you rather hear him fight? If we want conflict, he is very capable of giving it to us. “More money, more power, more freedom, everything that heaven has given us / Bitch, I deserve it all,” he raps in Man in the Garden. And so yes, Kendrick Lamar is the GOAT of 2024 and GNX explains very well why it is. But ultimately the existential dilemma of seeking wealth or systemic change remains unresolved.
From Rolling Stone US.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
