Every week, Consequence’s Songs of the Week column puts a spotlight on quality new tunes from the last seven days and analyzes notable releases. Find our new favorites and more on our Top Songs playlist, and for other great songs from emerging artists, check out our New Sounds playlist. This week, Kendrick Lamar takes aim at everyone on “wacced out murals.”
Not sure if y’all have heard, but Kendrick Lamar has a new album out. It’s called GNX and it arrived this morning without warning. Isn’t that something? Who could have seen that coming? Not Father John Misty, that’s for sure…
If you’re anything like us, you raced to stream the record as soon as you heard the news. You found that cool-ass picture of Lamar leaning on his car in seconds flat and hit play on track one, “wacced out murals.” Then, after about half a minute of admiring the insane production and Deyra Barrera’s introductory vocals, you came to a realization: Oh shit, K.Dot’s pissed. Like, really fucking pissed.
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We should have known that would be the case. He spent most of the year taking out his anger via his beef with Drake, subsequently (and perhaps accidentally) achieving the rare feat of fostering a moment of 21st-century monoculture. Whether he was addressing Aubrey’s family members directly or getting baseball stadiums to vibe out to a diss track where he unambiguously calls Drake a pedophile, Lamar wasn’t exactly coming through with happy-go-lucky tunes.
So, how does he kick off what will easily go down as one of the most talked about albums of 2024? By making one point clear — fuck everyone. “All this talk is bitch-made, that’s on my Lord/ I’ll kill ’em all before I let ’em kill my joy,” he raps in his first verse. “It used to be fuck that n****, but now it’s plural/ Fuck everybody, that’s on my body.”
Overtop a hard-hitting, surprisingly minimal (at least when compared to the compositions found on his previous projects) beat, Lamar lays out both what’s got him so amped up and what he’s going to do about it. And it’s not just Drake in the center of his crosshairs, as he hits J. Cole for stirring up the beef in the first place, slams Snoop Dog for posting Drake’s AI-enhanced diss track “Taylor Made Freestyle,” and addresses Lil Wayne’s reaction to Lamar securing the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show. Like he said, “now it’s plural.”
It’s a fiery, intensely confrontational way to start GNX, one that primes the listener for the rest of the fiery, intensely confrontational tracks. Because if you thought “wacced out murals” was merely Lamar getting it out of his system, boy are you in for a beating…
— Jonah Krueger
Editorial Coordinator
