Kendrick Lamar Drops Surprise Album, GNX | Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar has released a surprise album called GNX.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper teased the release a one minute video before the 12-track album was released.

Lamar’s sixth studio album features multiple appearances from SZA as well as Kamasi Washington and a producer credit for Jack Antonoff on all but one song. Earlier this week, DJ Snake had claimed that Taylor Swift would also appear on the album.

It caps off a banner year in which the rapper released a string of songs attacking Drake, hits that earned him seven Grammy nominations. He achieved major chart hits with Not Like Us and Like That.

The new album does not feature any of the songs from earlier this year, but does include the track Heart Pt 6, after Drake released The Heart Part 6 in May, a diss track aimed at Lamar’s ongoing songwriting streak.

“I don’t think I’m an angry person,” Lamar said earlier this year in a interview. “But I believe in love and war, and I believe they both have to exist. And my awareness of that allows me to respond to things but not identify with them as who I am. Just allowing them to exist and allow them to flow through me. That’s what I believe.”

Lamar is also set to be the halftime player at next year’s Super Bowl. It’s a headline gig referenced on Wacced Out Murals, a song on the new album. He raps that Nas had been the “only one” to congratulate him and that his “hard work failed Lil’ Wayne.”

“Rap music remains the most influential genre to date,” Lamar said in a statement at the time. “And I’ll be there to remind the world why. They’ve got the right one.”

His last album, 2022’s Mr Morale & the Big Steppers, was named Best Rap Album at the Grammy Awards. He also became the first non-classical or jazz artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his 2017 album Damn.