Kendrick Lamar is victorious in the Best Rap Album category again, thanks to his excellent 2024 record GNX. The rapper took home the prize in a field featuring Clipse (Let God Sort Em Out), GloRilla (Glorious), Tyler, The Creator (CHROMAKOPIA), and JID (God Does Like Ugly). This is Lamar’s fourth time winning the category, after To Pimp a Butterfly, DAMN., and Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers all got recognized in their respective years. Every time he wins this award I’m reminded of the Recording Academy’s decision to award Macklemore and Ryan Lewis Best Rap Album for The Heist in 2014 instead of Lamar for good kid, m.A.A.d city.
With this year’s win, Lamar is now tied with Kanye West for the second-most Best Rap Album victories in history. They both trail Eminem, who has six wins. But will Lamar finally be able to take home that elusive Album of the Year Grammy? Here’s hoping. Accepting his award, Lamar said: “Every time I tell you this, hip-hop is gonna always be right here.”
Paste was high on GNX in 2024. I reviewed the record and gave it a Paste Pick designation, and it landed at #19 on our year-end list. I wrote:
“The peace and love Kendrick Lamar yearns for on GNX is mixed with ‘fuck you’ platitudes and skyscraper-sized middle fingers. That affection, the first brick gets laid down at home. The Pirus and Crips come together on a California stage and shout ‘Not Like Us’ together—who gives a damn about the rest of the world? This an album begging for rap’s glory days to be resurrected, a love letter to Southern California disguised as a #1 record. On ‘wacced out murals,’ Kendrick laments the destruction of a mural of him in Compton; K.Dot only raps the hook on ‘gnx,’ letting Los Angeles’ future (Hitta J3, Peysoh, YoungThreat) take the wheel; he name-drops Kobe Bryant’s 81-point game on ‘peekaboo’; ‘dodger blue’ is a major cypher of SoCal, measuring gang rivalries like ‘Dreamers and the Jets’ and calling bullshit on posturing locals who don’t drive on the 10/
Kendrick summons G-funk, mariachi, and hyphy music all on one album; as Joseph Campbell once wrote: ‘The labyrinth is thoroughly known.’ GNX is a fascinating listen that’s as flawed as any of Kendrick’s previous albums. He converses with the divine, walks the margins that separate good and evil, takes a dive but hits on the cash-out, puts his next-up disciples under the light, and calls upon pop music’s most in-demand producer to make his West Coast domination legible. Coastal beefs, yesteryear-beckoning factions, victory laps coalesced with brotherhood, a vow to “live one in harmony now”—GNX contends that it’s time to fill rap music with the politicking of old, where powerful people coalesce selfishness with gain for the greater good and artists take their time with their art.”
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