Sunday Music: Kendrick Lamar's "Squabble Up"

When Kendrick Lamar surprise drops a new record, I need time to digest. GMX needs time. But not to grow on me. I spent a weekend driving around with it on repeat. This is Kendricks’ most accessible work in a while. It’s already got its hooks in me. And not for (exactly) normal Kendrick reasons.

It’s an album about progression. About passing on values. About growing into values that were previously out of reach.

I can get behind all of that.

It’s even right there in the title - a GMX is the name of an exclusive issue Buick from the late 1980s. Kendrick’s father drove a standard issue version. As a personal nod to his own success, he bought himself the fancy version that his dad only could have pined for years ago.

Aspirations achieved. Sort of. Because aspirations are also often misunderstood.

It’s one thing to dream it and another thing to be it. Life is weird like that.

My quibble about the album comes down to unpacking the rushed nature of its release (he’s literally operating at warp speed here, referencing stuff that just happened, like the defacing of a mural of him a mere months ago as one of a million micro-examples), as opposed to doing the Pulitzer Prize winning style I love.

And I know it’s not about me. It’s about him, and his art, and the questions he wants to ask, so I’m here to buy my ticket and take whatever ride he’s offering. Not to mention, he’s already considered the me’s of the world asking the questions, because he plays chess like that, and even I can’t escape my awe of his strategy as he frames it in the Nas honoring “Man at the Garden” (with my emphasis added):

Shameless or famous? Damn, OK. I’ll have more thoughts on the rest of this later, I am sure, but for now, I want to focus on the one we’ll all be hearing everywhere.

“Squabble Up” has been chosen as the apparent lead single. It (lyrically) opens with the theme of being born, being born again, and still finding yourself gazing to both the heavens above and your earthly legacy as it forms behind you, all at once:

He continues with the trappings of life on the ascent. Where success comes with new petty problems. Where success from performance breeds a new type of successful image maintenance performances of a whole new (and very strange) breed:

And where it all ultimately lands, the awareness of the progression meeting the self-awareness of the petty (shameless or famous, again and again), Mr. Morale is stepping up to face some new versions of old demons:

Lest you think it’s just in the lyrics, you have to check out the video too. The visual metaphors go as hard as the verbal ones.

There’s plenty of analysis on each frame on YouTube if curious, but the one that immediately made me smile was the nod to The Roots’ video for “The Next Movement.” It was a song about them pushing the hip-hop genre forward with full awareness of the soil their roots (pun intended) were deeply planted in. After Questlove called the Kendrick/Drake beef the death of hip-hop, it’s only fitting Kendrick would reuse the visual of their video to reframe his entire message. Brilliant.

Here’s “Squabble Up,” the primary sample (this is a MF Doom quality re-imagining of a synthy dance classic that no other rapper would use, I love this so much, and big respect to Debbie Deb), and then The Roots video just so you can smile with me.

What do you think of GNX, of “Squabble Up,” or any of this? Let me know!