GNX is released

Why it matters

GNX came out November 22, 2024, on PGLang/Interscope, without prior promotional rollout. Kendrick Lamar surprise-dropped the album with no lead single and no advance marketing campaign. Sounwave produced most of it. The album is twelve tracks across approximately 45 minutes and is Kendrick's first studio LP since 2022's Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. The album landed in a cultural moment that had been entirely defined, since May 2024, by Kendrick's win in the Drake beef. "Not Like Us" had been the soundtrack of the second half of 2024. The Super Bowl LIX halftime show in February 2025 would feature Kendrick doing "Not Like Us" in front of a hundred million people. GNX is the album that consolidated the moment commercially: it debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 with 319,000 first-week units, generated multiple Top 10 singles ("squabble up," "luther" with SZA, "tv off" with Lefty Gunplay), and is widely treated as one of Kendrick's most accessible records since DAMN. You should hear it after Mr. Morale. The two records together describe the arc of his most consequential creative period to date.