Appositely named after a vintage model car that’s dear to his heart, Kendrick Lamar’s sixth album would sound great with the top down and a back seat full of friends nodding in sync to this album’s taut Sounwave productions and bullish self-belief. Lamar ropes in just three famous pals – SZA, Kamasi Washington and, notably, ubiquitous pop producer Jack Antonoff – preferring to showcase new guest rappers on a 12-track bout of amply backed-up grandstanding. While some bewailed this year’s major Drake beef as undignified, most agree that Lamar won, earning assorted Grammy nominations for his track Not Like Us. He managed to broker a Bloods/Crips gang truce to boot.
Tracks such as the minimal yet swaggering Man at the Garden thoughtfully detail exactly how Lamar deserves all his accolades and material rewards, while the brilliant, wide-ranging Reincarnated finds him in an imaginary conversation with his father (really, his Father), referencing past musicians’ drug habits, Lamar’s recent history (“I put 100 hoods on one stage”) and using one’s gifts for good. GNX’s pop bent and self-assurance recalls 2017’s Damn more than his jazz magnum opus To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), but the album’s mariachi-singer interludes and the nostalgic exegesis of Heart Pt 6 add up to another unmissable Lamar outing.
