'GNX': Lamar at his most anti-heroic

Over the past decade or so, the Kendrick Lamar mythos had become increasingly grandiose—the only rapper to win a Pulitzer; a conceptual genius making high-brow art; the savior of hip-hop who embodied the genre's moral backbone.

- BHANUJ KAPPAL

Critics raved about how he had "elevated gangsta rap", and declared K.Dot as "(his) generation's most potent artistic voice". By the early 2020s, rap heads would talk about Lamar in the same hushed, reverential tones as 20th-century philosophers discussing Ludwig Wittgenstein.

That's an incredibly heavy crown to bear. More importantly, it's a trap. No blood-and-flesh human can live up to the demands and expectations of being a real-life prophet—that sort of divinity inevitably leads to either downfall or martyrdom. Nobody knows that better than Lamar, a rapper who grew up within the morally grey universe of gangland Compton, and who has always been aware of his own fallibility.

His 2022 album, titled Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, was him rejecting the throne and dismantling the halo around his head. It showcases Lamar at his most vulnerable—and most human—as he grapples with childhood abuse and trauma, confesses to sins like infidelity and sex addiction, and disavows the notion of rappers as anybody's saviors. It was a knotty, messy sprawl of an album, steeped in paranoia, temptation, and the sobering awareness of one's own vulnerability. You could tell that Lamar needed a change of pace, a chance to shrug off his messianic legacy and start afresh.

He got the opportunity to do just that this year, when Drake and J. Cole anointed themselves—alongside Lamar—as the "Big Three" on First Person Shooter. Lamar wasn't having it. "Motherf—k the big three, n—a, it's just big me," he responded on Future & Metro Boomin's track Like That, igniting a generation-defining rap beef. It was rap as vicious bloodsport—no rules, no honor, just two rap giants pummeling each other with everything they had, including accusations of pedophilia, sex trafficking, and domestic abuse.