Cautiously Optimistic for the American Dream: Kendrick Lamar’s GNX (2024)

Last fall, Kendrick Lamar’s surprise release GNX cemented the California-based rapper as the winner of the hip-hop game — which says as much about the genre of rap itself as it does about this blistering, important album.

Even in Japan, rap’s origins are so well-known as to be almost mythical: the racially and socio-economically disenfranchised remixing songs, creating communities through performance, and raging against the machine in the back alleys of America’s inner cities — from the Bronx to Chicago to LA. But as hip-hop went mainstream in the US (and around the globe), the parameters of the genre — and the rules of its game — morphed from a foundation of collaboration and community to one of competition and individualism.

In a sense, hip-hop’s evolution represents the paradox of the so-called “American Dream”: another near mythical concept known around the world which promises that you can achieve anything in the USA, so long as you work hard enough. In actuality, though, capitalism is conflated with democracy in America. Here in the “Land of the Free,” we’re told that we “vote with our dollar”— although since Donald Trump was sworn in as president on January 20th with his Mars-bound henchmen of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg in tow, it’s clear that we 99% didn’t have enough democratic capital to to overthrow the billionaires...

In America, then, money might be coveted for what it can do for us, but often ends up becoming the goal in and of itself. To some people, what money can buy you isn’t as important as how much money you can accumulate. I can’t help but think that this is why rap culture, as a mainstream commodity, is so status and money-obsessed. It explains why Kanye West went from reminding us that the best things in life are free on “The Good Life” to barking at people to hurry up with his damned croissant on “I Am A God.” It’s why Jay-Z rapped, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.”

But on GNX — fresh off a series diss tracks aimed at Drake and his Lolita- complex, and the hideous sex scandal surrounding P. Diddy — Kendrick uses rap to fight against what this musical genre has come to represent. He frames his rivals as opponents of rap’s integrity, which the album both mourns and celebrates— perhaps even demands. He wastes no time establishing this message, either. On the opening track of “wacced out murals”, Kendrick declares that “everybody questionable,” and calls out some rappers explicitly (like Lil Wayne and Snoop Dog, the latter with his “old-ass flows”), and others — specifically Drake — more implicitly, and repeatedly throughout the entire album.

Aspects of GNX have a distinct feel of pre-White Lives Matter Kanye, when he tried to use his platform for positivity (“I know people wouldn’t usually rap this,” Kanye pronounces on Graduation’s “Everything I Am,” “But I got the facts to back this / Just last year, Chicago had over six hundred caskets / Man, killing’s some wack shit”). There’s strong themes of Christian redemption throughout the album as well, and even a decidedly Kanye-esque homage to both himself (“I deserve it all”) and his mother (“Yeah, SHE deserves it all”) with “Man at the Garden.” The difference, though, between

Kendrick and Kanye— and other rappers of our time— is that Kendrick didn’t fall prey to the siren song of fame and power. He continues to use his status to preach for something better. Perhaps the crown jewel of the album, “Reincarnated” investigates the age-old struggle between ego and humility, and the temptation of power and money, with stunning honesty. Inserting himself into a lineage of Black greats before him, Kendrick promises: “I vow my life to just to live one in harmony now/ You crushed a lot of people keeping their thoughts in captivity/ And I’m ashamed that I ever created that enemy/ Then let’s rejoice where we at / I rewrote the devil’s story just to take our power back, reincarnated.”

Musically, GNX is at once ornate and spare, which captures the lush loneliness of life at the top, and the isolating responsibility that comes with great power. Against some off-kilter rhythms and Kendrick’s signature ability to get into character, though, GNX’s musical stamp might be the Mariachi vocals from a previously unknown singer woven throughout the album. This Mexican music is especially haunting in Donald Trump’s second presidency, which less than a week in promises to deport undocumented people en-mass, and rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Beyond its lyrics, then, GNX is a love-letter to inclusion: a solemn celebration of community over individual, and collaboration over individualism.

America is a nation of dreamers, and is an experiment in separate cultural pieces coming together as a whole. It’s complicated and messy here. It’s loud, it’s in-your-face, nothing runs on time. Sometimes it’s violent. And while the American Dream may seem like a bad joke as people struggle to pay bills working full-time jobs, and while our politics are overrun by comic book-levels of villainy, I dare say that Kendrick’s GNX is a cautiously optimistic prayer. Yes, this is the shit show we’re in, but now is the time to get honest, learn from our mistakes, and use whatever power we may to make something better— in America and beyond.