Kendrick Lamar surprised the entire music world this afternoon by dropping GNX, his sixth studio album. The album is the follow-up to 2022’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers and comes after Lamar engaged with Drake in the highest-profile rap beef in decades this spring. The beef culminated with the anthemic “Not Like Us,” which was nominated for Song of the Year and Record of the Year (as well as three other categories) at the upcoming 67th Grammy Awards in February. Now, GNX is here, and he has a lot to say.
Kendrick Lamar addressed a number of topics on the new album, including Lil Wayne’s lack of support for his Super Bowl halftime show announcement, suggesting that he finished the recording process very recently. He also addressed why Black Hippy, the supergroup of Ab-Soul, Jay Rock, ScHoolboy Q, and Lamar, never released an album. He does so on “heart pt. 6,” the latest installment in his long-running “The Heart” series of tracks, which also serves as a reclamation of the track name after Drake attempted to beat Lamar to the punch with one of the most ill-advised diss tracks in recent memory.
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Kendrick Lamar Explains Why Black Hippy Album Never Happened
“Black Hippy didn’t work because of me / Creatively I moved on with new concepts in reach,” Kendrick Lamar raps on “heart pt. 6.” Fans may remember the early days of Top Dawg Entertainment’s rise to stardom. Back then, it felt like the Black Hippy album got teased every year for several years in a row before it was eventually shelved. Now we know that at least part of the reason for the album never releasing while Lamar was on TDE was because he was not as enthusiastic about it as time passed and his artistry flourished.
Kendrick Lamar has since left TDE, with GNX being his first full-length release through his pgLang media company, though he still has a distribution deal with Interscope Records. Fans are unlikely to ever get the Black Hippy album at this point in everyone’s careers. They are even less likely to get the Lamar and J. Cole collaborative album, given what happened this year. But, for longtime fans of Lamar and the rest of his former Black Hippy squadmates, this line and their reunion at Lamar’s Pop Out concert in June, provides some closure on a bygone era of hip-hop.
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