GNX (album)

Did You Know?

• Lamar and SZA announced the Grand National Tour on December 3, 2024, which began on April 19, 2025, in Minneapolis and concluded on December 11, 2025, in Sydney, Australia.
• At the 68th Grammy Awards, GNX won Best Rap Album and was nominated for Album of the Year, losing to Debí Tirar Más Fotos by Bad Bunny.

Background

Kendrick Lamar's fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, dropped on May 13, 2022, to strong reviews and sales. Right after, he started work on GNX with producers Sounwave and Jack Antonoff. Over the next couple of years, the trio cut roughly 80 to 100 songs in the studio, whittling them down to twelve for the final tracklist. Once The Big Steppers Tour wrapped in March 2024, Lamar posted online that he'd bought a vintage 1987 Buick Grand National Experimental (GNX)—a rare, souped-up version of the same car his dad used to drive him home from the hospital when he was born. Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers marked his last album with Top Dawg Entertainment, the label he'd been with since 2005, and his first release through his own company, PGLang. Before his beef with Drake heated up again, Lamar quietly left Aftermath Entertainment and struck a direct licensing deal with its distributor, Interscope Records. During the latest round of that feud, he dropped five standalone singles, including the Billboard Hot 100 number ones "Like That" and "Not Like Us." The video for "Not Like Us" teased a then-untitled track that fans later learned was called "Squabble Up." Rumors about a new album started circulating, though some were shot down by people close to him. After being picked to headline the Super Bowl LIX halftime show, Lamar surprised fans by releasing "Watch the Party Die" on Instagram. By October, longtime collaborators Terrace Martin, SZA, and Schoolboy Q all confirmed that fresh music was on the way.

Composition

GNX consists of 12 songs with a running time of 44 minutes and 20 seconds, making it Lamar's shortest studio album. Although no tracks from his feud with Drake are included, Vulture noted its sentiment still looms over the album. It is a West Coast hip-hop album drawing on classic and contemporary conventions of the genre, with Rolling Stone describing it as a tribute to Lamar's native Los Angeles that infuses G-funk throughout. Regional Mexican music and mariachi singer Deyra Barrera appears on three tracks, including the opening and closing tracks and "Reincarnated"; Lamar discovered her when she performed at a Los Angeles Dodgers World Series game he attended in 2024. The production team played Barrera the instrumentation arrangements and described the emotions Lamar wanted to evoke. "Wacced Out Murals" opens the album with Lamar addressing reactions to his Super Bowl LIX halftime show announcement, namedropping Nas, Snoop Dogg, and Lil Wayne. "Squabble Up" features myriad voices, octave changes, and shrieks, and has been compared to the work of Drakeo the Ruler. "Luther" samples Marvin Gaye's 1967 song "If This World Were Mine" as performed by Luther Vandross. "Man at the Garden" details Lamar's career trials, repeatedly declaring he "deserve[s] it all." "Hey Now" includes elements of bounce music and lines possibly alluding to his feud with Drake. "Reincarnated" is built off the instrumental of Tupac Shakur's "Made Niggaz" and sees Lamar present himself as John Lee Hooker and Billie Holiday before conversing with God.

Critical reception

GNX received widespread critical acclaim upon release. Many reviews considered it a victory lap for Lamar after his 2024 hip-hop feuds. Critics from Exclaim! and Variety praised its tributes to West Coast hip-hop and Lamar's ability to distill various elements into a cohesive record. Paste's Matt Mitchell upheld the album as a reimagination of rap's future and Lamar's past, while NME's Kyann-Sian Williams called it an "easy contender for the rap album of 2024." Tom Breihan of Stereogum hailed it as the year's best record and Lamar's "greatest work" yet. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian commented that GNX found Lamar at his most confrontational, "deferring only to God." Matthew Kim of The Line of Best Fit described it as "a concise statement of regional pride, braggadocio, and non-conformity." Rolling Stone's Mosi Reeves felt the album explained why Lamar is the "GOAT of 2024" but did not address larger cultural questions about structural changes in hip-hop. AllMusic's David Crone called it "a pillar of reflective realness, a flag planted in the lineage of Black musical visionaries." A minority of mixed reviews from Pitchfork, Robert Christgau, and Will Hodgkinson acclaimed Lamar's rap delivery and production but felt his self-bragging and clean, synthetic sound overtook the authenticity of his past albums. Jon Caramanica of The New York Times considered the album "impressive but slight."

Commercial performance

GNX racked up more than 44.2 million streams globally on Spotify in its first day, averaging over 3.6 million per song despite being released just seven hours earlier. It claimed the top two spots on the U.S. Spotify chart, with "Squabble Up" leading at 3.272 million streams. In the U.S., the album entered the Billboard 200 at number one with 319,000 album-equivalent units, driven by 379.72 million on-demand streams and 32,000 pure sales. By its second week, it surpassed 500,000 units, giving Lamar his fifth straight number-one album and the sixth-largest opening week of 2024. It also posted the year's biggest streaming week for any hip-hop or R&B album. All 12 tracks debuted on the Billboard Hot 100, occupying the entire top five simultaneously, making Lamar the fifth artist ever to do so. After his Super Bowl Halftime Show, GNX returned to number one on the Billboard 200 chart dated February 22, 2025. It also debuted at number one in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.