Switched on Pop - Kendrick Lamar: from Pulitzer to pop

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

In 2024, Kendrick Lamar pulled off what seemed impossible: winning hip-hop's biggest rap battle in recent history, securing the Super Bowl halftime show, and dropping GNX, a surprise album that might be the year's defining pop record. But this triumphant return wasn't guaranteed. Two decades into his career — well past the average life expectancy of a rap career — Kendrick faced a critical challenge: how to balance his legendary artistic complexity with mainstream accessibility. Songs discussed: Kendrick Lamar – squabble up Kendrick Lamar – luther (feat. SZA) Kendrick Lamar – tv off (feat. Lefty Gunplay) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to Switched on pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. I'm musicologist

Nate Sloan. And I'm engineer, Brandon McFarland. What's up? I don't know if you guys heard, but Kendrick Lamar dropped an album. Yeah. Oh, we heard. This has been the biggest year.

You know, in 2024, we've experienced the biggest rap battle in recent history between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick Lamar has, I think, unanimously come out on top as the winner. And he dropped a song claiming that the whole hip-hop party needed to die. Brandon, you used that as a frame to look at all the moments in history that people have declared. that hip hop is dead slash free therapy for your existential crisis. Right. But Watch the Party Die was a red herring.

It was simply the impetus for a Kendrick Lamar rebirth. Now, here's the thing. I think there's a problem for Kendrick. Yeah, what's the problem? Well, Kendrick is two decades into making music. He's many years past the average life expectancy of a rap career. And, you know, his last album, Mr. Morale, The Big Stepers from 2022, It's a bit of a commercial and critical dip in his career.

He left Top Dog Entertainment and launched his own entertainment company, P.G. Lange. And then there's just total turn of fates. He has a feud with Drake. In 2024, because the most defining cultural moment. The song Not Like Us is arguably one of the biggest songs of the year. He secures the Super Bowl halftime show. And he gives us the surprise drop of the album GNX on November 22nd. But he has this tricky balancing act that I think he has to do.

On the one hand, he needs to appease all the fans, and on the other, he needs to build a new audience. And I think that's hard for him to do because Kendrick Lamar, his work comes with a lot of narrative debt. You know, his albums are dense, they are layered, they are epics. Indeed. They can be hard to follow if you're just catching up, right? He's an acquired taste. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he comments on everything from his community and the loaded cultural assumptions of Compton.

Yeah, yeah. Systemic racism and black identity. Faith and morality. Personal trauma and mental health. You ain't felt grief till you felt it so loose. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the album, Damn, recognized for its lyrical power, its social commentary, and its deep ties to black musical history.

And fans pick apart all of this work in a like QAnon, let's call it K-Anon level of screen. He has to balance all of this intellectual musical depth with accessibility for casual listeners. And I think that that is what GNX is all about. Sometimes listening to Kendrick, I'm like, is there a duolingo for this? Like, I feel like I need to learn the language in order to penetrate the density of his lyrical flow. And I think that's also what makes it so rewarding to listen to him.

Because if you're in the know, if you understand. the lore, then all of these secret messages makes you feel like you're inducted into this secret society. Yeah. I mean, all of his accolades don't get him played in the club. And I think like this album represents, at least for me, Kendrick stating like, I purposely did not choose to make music to dance to because I was focused on whatever, you know, the issues that face neighborhoods like his. He was dedicating his career to making music that, raise the consciousness of the hip-hop community. And now, post-battle, he's at its highest heights.

And he's like, I'll make you dance now. Brandon, what you just said makes me think of this line on the first track on GNX whacked out murals. Kendrick raps. This is not for lyricists. I swear it's not the sentiments. Fuck a double entendre. I want y'all to feel this shit.

Oh, so. And I feel like that's the ethos of this shit. the ethos of this album to some degree. It's like, I'm going to leave some of the wordplay to the side, and I'm just going to make you focus on feeling this in your bones and your gut and in your booty. Honestly, what else does he have to explain? I feel like the earlier catalog is so dense. If you want that Kendrick again, you can go back to it.

I just want to say that I'm very excited about the future of Kendrick's career and this record. It hits home in ways that I'll. I'll explain later. I'm wearing my Oakland sweater. So we'll get into it later. So GNX is not one of these concept album epics in a certain way. He's making a turn towards pop. And he's doing it, I think, in two main ways.

One is he's making songs that are ready for pop radio, right? GNX is full of songs that have strong concepts, catchy hooks, production that pops, lyrics that stick. And second, he's imbueing the whole project. with a strong sense of localism, which might make you think it goes more esoteric, but actually localism is a major trend in hip hop right now, and a big part of his whole thing is trying to knock those

who have gone to mainstream, to commercial. He's a critic of those who are hip hop tourists. And so there's a very strong sense of his local identity in this record. Yeah. So I figure we should try to hear this by breaking down GNX's both pop and local appeal in its three biggest tracks. I want to start with squabble up. Squabble up.

Squabble up. Squabble up. Okay, so here we have with Squabble Up, a song about his rebirth, about claiming his cultural authority, and basically saying that he's ready to fight. He's going to squabble up. Part of the way that he's claiming this rebirth

is by giving us a production that pops. It is built off of a really fun sample, Debbie Debs' 1984 Latin freestyle hit, when I hear music. So we've got a sample that is not afraid to say, I'm here to give you some music that's going to make you dance. Indeed. Maybe there is a little bit of a double entendre here,

both dance literally, but also dance as in not afraid to squabble up, get in a fight. Dance like in a wild, wild west kind of way. Like, you're ready to dance? Okay, I see what you're saying. And it's a fun sample. It draws from the early days of Latin freestyle music, a genre we explored heavily on our listening to Madonna series.

The song was a minor hit, only went to 43 on the R&B singles chart, but it was a major dance floor hit with DJs in the Latin freestyle scene, which was really influenced by some early hip-hop, specifically electro. In fact, when I hear music might be making another callback to Planet Rock because when I hear music uses the same drum pattern, baseline, and vocoding style to that electro-classic. Oh, yeah. I don't know the origins of Latin freestyle to feel like the West Coast claims it as hard as they do, but we really do.

Like, we love Latin freestyle. There's a radio station that dedicated, like, the entire night, every night to Latin freestyle music. Shout out to Wild 949. But, yeah, like, the synth work, the ATAway drum machines, it's all West Coast stuff. What I really like about listening to Squabble Up is that there's never really a second of. of like loop when you hear the synths. They're coming in whenever they want, almost like a band is playing it.

And this may be, I don't know if this is true, but I would attribute it to the many producers on this album, including Jack Antonoff, who, I mean, talk about going pop. We haven't mentioned this yet, but pop icon producer. What the fuck, I got hits, I got bucks, I got new paper cuts, I got friends, I got foes, but they are sitting ducks,

it's turf, and get cracking. It's just everywhere since just candy falling from the sky. It's just like every second of this beat has something interesting in it. I love that. Well, and this is, I feel like what connects it to its local identity as well. As much as its Latin freestyle sample, all of those Moog high synth sounds, that's just straight up West Coast g-funk. This is like the legacy of Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg.

That is what I'm hearing as much as I'm hearing that original sample. So it's sort of claiming multiple geographical identities at the same time. I want to send a special shout out to Oakland hip hop circa, the early 2000s. This is the Hafei era. This is what I hear when I hear the drums in particular. There's a part maybe at the end of each like A bar stanza where the drums just go, boom, boom, boom, boom. This is like a particular thing that Oakland rappers do or Bay Area rappers do. in general, like, a lot of their music.

If I could play an example, I would play a song called NoHo by DeLo. The first two-second shooter, you know what I'm talking about. Oh. Oh. Look good, but she don't got no ties. Oh. Oh. I mean, and other examples would be, like, jerk music, which was also prominent in L.A.

in the early 20 teens. I mean, he's galvanizing all of the West Coast, like not just L.A., which is really special. And he starts this song saying that he's been reincarnated because of the success of this rap duel. Reincarnated, I'm a stargazing. Life goes on, honey, and all my babies. A theme that he continues later on a song called Reincarnated,

where he samples Tupac and copies his flow. I got this fire burning near me from within. So he's not above putting himself on who I used to be, I'm shedding skin Every day a new version of me a third of me to mint it's a minute, some in pain juggling the pros. So he's not above putting himself within the company of his favorite West Coast rappers. He also puts his own identity, though, in the song, Squabble Up by name-dropping some of his best friends. Not many West Coast rappers have the ability to name-drop Kamasi Washington,

who's a longtime collaborator, the saxophone is Comanche Washington. Jazz legend now at this point, was all over, especially to Pimp a Butterfly. Do you guys know who Draco the Ruler is? Tell us about Draco. Draco is a L.A. based rapper. He died, unfortunately, in 2021. But the way he's rapping is like Draco the Rue. I'm fresh about the slimmer.

I'm a floo flammer. Nigger, all these chains on my neck. I need two ammers, nigger. Floo flamming, nigga. He dances with the beat in a beat in a little. a way that Kendrick paid homage to, I think, in Squabble Up. So he's putting himself in the company of all these West Coast rappers. And I love this moment where he says that he's so big that even when he leaves the West Coast,

he can't be tried. So he's a nicker couldn't try me in a tri-state muddy-past. So he's saying that like, even though he's big in California and he's got the whole West Coast thing, that is the most important sound to him. end of the whole world that when he goes to the tri-state area, the East Coast, he's invincible there as well. Tells it about right. And he's not afraid of conflict. I think that's very hip-hop of him. Yeah. I mean, he picks up his biggest low-blow pot shot at Drake, continuing his argument that Drake is accused of being a pedophile. It's good. Get it out of the way early on the album. You know, everyone's waiting for it.

Yeah. Get that Drake shade in there and then move on. Yeah. I'm not sure there's any real moving on. Yeah, it sucks though. It's like that they'll always be connected like this part of history. Yeah. You have to mention both names.

I would love to move on. Hopefully we can in the future. But for now, it's still, winter takes the spoils. I feel like one way that he is helping me move on is by giving me just hook after hook after hook. that the most important parts of this are these memorable moments and here you have of course the sampled hook

we have the squabble up hook Squabble up squabble up and then we have the actual chorus I feel good get the fuck out my thighs look good but she don't got no ties

I walk in, walk out with the size man don't let me know what the past what on earth is he doing with his voice in that moment yeah don't like my foot He's always been able to play with his voice in a way like no other rapper has dared to do.

Right. The first time I heard Good Kid Mad City, I was like, how many people are featured on this record? It's like, oh, it's all Kendrick, just doing different characters. It's like a combination of vocal fry and vibrato. Yeah. No, these little lines, they're so memeable.

Yes. I have to consider that he's doing this with the intentions of like, take a piece and put on the internet, any piece. So on Squabble Up, we have our big pop moments. We have things that are super memeable. We have all of our local references. We are not afraid to get in a fight.

A lot is established on this single. But he's got a lot of different vibes that he explores on this record. My favorite is the song right after Squabble Up, Luther. If this world were mine. Hey, Roman rule seven days, drop it like it's hot. If this world was mine, I take your dreams and make him most apply. If this world was mine, I take your enemies in front of God. Introduce him to that.

On Luther, I feel like we get a side of Kendrick that we rarely see. It's like sensitive, singing, loving Kendrick. It's letting his guard down a little bit, reaching into his love song bag. And right off the bat, the title of this song is telling us something about that. Because Luther is a reference to the legendary soul R&B singer Luther Van Gogh. whose song with Cheryl Lynn, If This World Were Mine, is sampled throughout the track. And that Luther Van Dross, Cheryl Lynn duet is itself a cover of Marvin Gay and Tammy Terrell classic from the 60s.

And Kendrick doesn't just sample this track. He follows in the footsteps of this romantic duet tradition by bringing in his own partner on this track, Siza. This is maybe the fourth collaboration between these two artists. And they've had some big hits together, including all the stars from the Black

Panther soundtrack back in 2018. And I feel like that lineage makes this song really fit in your GNX is a pop album argument, Charles, because I mean, this is like such a classic kind of structure here, this romantic duet between

two people. Kendrick, hardly even wraps on this song. He's like singing from beginning to end. Yeah. Often with very little auto tune. It's very vulnerable. It's very, uh, very 90s R&B. So just like on Squabble Up, I feel like the production here, the lyrics and the hooks all lean into this pop sensibility. I read the credits and we mentioned Kamasi Washington. He's credited as a producer on the song. Oh. Any speculation of what he did? I don't know. I don't know. I listened forensically to this track for any trace of the signature Comasdi Washington tenor saxophone. I was unable to locate it.

So I feel like I'm not equipped to comment on his role here, nor am I able to comment on the role of Jack Antonoff, who is also credited as a producer on this one. Yeah. But presumably, their fingerprints are on this somewhere. You know, great producers don't necessarily leave their fingerprints. Oftentimes it's about adapting your production style to what the artist needs. And, you know, I think as someone like Kamasi Washington in his record, the epic, he's not just a sax player. He's a band leader with like a three dozen piece band

and can, you know, full choir, adapt and mold, whatever needs to, you know, fit the vibe. I did also see in the credits that there was a small string section in this song also, so maybe he conducted, we don't. Interesting, interesting. I do want to point out the way that they sample is really special. It's almost as if it's inviting Luther and Sherilyn. They've been invited to this song, as opposed to just sampling it.

There's a part, I don't know, this chord, but it's what makes this arrangement, Luther and Sherilyn's arrangement of If This World Were Mine, really special. And it's like a sustained note before they start the chorus of their song. Right there, right there, where it says, if this world, what is that? That's pretty. Sounds like maybe a major seven chord. I think it's a chord built on the flat five of the scale.

And it's a dominant seventh chord with a raised 11th. That's a super common gospel chord, isn't it? Very, very common gospel music. It's vibe. It's got a beautiful resolution. Yeah. And wait. So it's here in Luther as well.

right there. Yeah. The other thing that I really like about the use of the sample is they don't just sample Luther. I think they also sample Cheryl when Siza comes in. So it's sampling the duet to cue up their own duet. It's real nice. It's an ensemble piece.

And I love that because this isn't a duet like you hear a lot of duets these days. Not to sound like a grumpy old man. But I feel like a lot of duets are like, I'm going to sing my part, you're going to sing your part. Maybe at one point we'll sing our parts together. It doesn't feel like you're even in the same room necessarily. This song is not like that. The whole arc of the song is about these two characters coming in and out of each other's lives. So it begins with Kendrick's solo.

And then it turns to them singing together in the chorus. And then in the second verse, they have this back and forth, almost like, almost like how old school rappers would like rap on top of each other, except this time it's singing. It's like they're singing on top of each other and it's so perfectly interlocked. Another way that this song I feel like as a duet is lyrically, it's dealing with sometimes conflicting themes, the sacred and the profane. Hmm. Now we've got biblical references here. Roman numeral seven. We could go to Romans 7, which is a passage about the marriage bond and the bond to God that one holds, which he then balances out with a reference to Snoop dogs, drop it like it's hot.

So we have both the church and the club in this same passage, which might represent the, you know, complexity and fullness of a relationship that happens in both places. Okay, Kian. That was slick. I like Del. There's one other important lyrical reference here to an artist that you mentioned earlier, Charlie. On the track Reincarnated, we heard Kendrick emulating Tupac's vocal style. now Siza is referencing a poem by Tupac called The Rose That Grew from Concrete. The first line of Tupac's poem reads,

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Which is a poem that makes me think of California, whether the East Bay where Tupac was from and Nate and I used to live, or in Los Angeles where I used to live, Nate Now lives, Brandon, you live. Both are often known as concrete jungles and also places that have a lot of urban poverty. And yet from this concrete, a flower can bloom.

In the case of Tupac, becoming one of the biggest rappers of his era, in the case of this romance portrayed by Siza and Kendrick Kumar, a romance that was born maybe from hardship but is blooming. Yeah. Yeah. It's hopeful.

It just makes me think about who Kendrick is. the conditions in which he grew up in Compton, in the 90s and early 2000s where the murder rates were insane in gang territory. He still tells his story, but for him to talk about this type of love or love under these conditions in this world is extra special when you know where he comes from. Well, there it is, right? It's like the pop sample with all of the local roots. Both are happening. Yeah. We've got one more song to look at. Let's check out the single, which is, is blowing up right now right after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it.

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When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. All right, so we talked a little bit in the beginning of the episode about Kendrick being and a choir taste, somebody that you have to be in a certain headspace

to listen to his albums are very dense. You know, you have to have your notebook out. You're reading glasses. Yes, exactly. And I think once the announcement for the Super Bowl happened, I don't know about you, but I thought, like, what songs are we going? I know we're going to hear, like, all right. And maybe a few others from his discography, but swimming pools.

And I watch him off like all the girls want to play may watch. I got a swim and pool full of liquor and they die. Yeah. But where's the Super Bowl song? Yeah. This is funny. He's one of those artists where he's like, his acclaim is bigger than his singles.

You know, he's not an artist with a lot of super huge pop singles that everybody was singing along to. Yeah. Doesn't have a lot of them. He doesn't have a lot of them. I'm here to tell you. Not like us is obviously going to be a big song.

Sure. Sure. But TV off is right behind it as like the Super Bowl song. You can tell it's a Super Bowl song from the gate. All I have a wanted was a black grand national. Fuck being rational. Give them what they ask for. It's not enough.

Few solid niggins left, but it's not enough. Few bids that are really stabbed, but it's not enough. Give them what they ask for. Indeed. This song feels like it shares some musical DNA with Not Like Us, too. Yeah. Sample Stabs. sparse open beat, almost the same tempo.

They're very similar. Okay, so we've got this song, which is, in some ways, sort of a follow-up, it feels like, to not like us, working with the same producer, DJ Mustard, it's got a similar kind of production style. And conceptually, on the one hand, he's saying, I'm going to give the audiences what they're asking for. F being rational, we're just going to have some fun, we're going to keep the conflict going. And yet I feel like there's a larger message here with TV off. It's really about sort of the duality of the rap game. On the one hand, he's saying, I'm going to give it to you

raw, unfiltered bars. We're going to go right back into the rap battle. And that's sort of half the song. And then the other half of the song is a real critique about the commercialization of hip hop, literally telling people, turn the TV off. Like, stop giving us low culture. Really know the culture you're coming from. And I feel like he is existing in this duality. Yeah, I hear that. I might even interpret it differently, too, his verses. They're kind of pointing the finger at, like you said, rap culture. I think the TV off may mean, like, I'm at the pinnacle now. If you don't like my standards of how I'm doing things, and you can cut the TV off. Because now I'm here on your TV. Turn this TV off. Ain't with my type of activities. Then don't you get involved. Hey, what? How many shit I

see and send them all? Take a wrestle. Take a trip. You know, I'm going. Tripping for my dog, who you're with. Couple sergeants and lieutenant. Yeah, you can tell he's digging back into the rap beef because the song starts exactly like, not like us. Like, it's the same song, basically, same tempo. You know, there's a sample in the beginning. So we have a sample here of Monk Higgins, MacArthur Park, MacArthur Park, famous park in

Los Angeles. Wow. What a strange sample. Seriously. But because they're stabs, it works. It gives you the feeling without the groove of the old. old song. And then he just like totally dives right back into the rap battle. They like, what are you on? This is the alpha and omega bitch, welcome home.

This is not a song. This is a revelation. How to get a nigga gone. This is not a song. This is a revelation. About basically got to kick Drake out of the game. And he said, this is the alpha and omega welcome home. Like he's like, you're in heaven now. Hi, you're dead. You're gone. I love it. He's also the beginning and the end of the alphabet. He represents every letter, every word. So on one hand, Kendrick is not ducking any smoke.

He's very happy to address the beef at any point in time. But it's bigger than the beef. When you dive into his lyrics, he has something to say. Who you're with? Couple sergeants and lieutenants for the get back. This revolution been televised. I fell through with the knick-knacks.

A young nigga, get your chili up. Yeah, I meant that. A blackout if they act out, yeah, if I did that. Yeah, if I could speculate, put my tinfoil hat on for a minute. Canaan. I think.

I think he's like, this is how we handle conflicts in hip hop. Yeah. You know, where the battle went, how personal it got. I think he stands on everything he said. And so, you know, I imagine that that has divided a lot of people in the music industry. I love that, Brandon. I feel like you could also read this as a commentary on the attention economy writ large, right? Turn this TV off.

Is this a reference to Gil Scott Herons, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised? one clue that it is is Lamar rapping this revolution been televised Now the message of that get back This revolution been televised I fell through with a dick next The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised The revolution will not be brought to you by Now the message of that Gil Scott Heron song remains immensely relevant And yet maybe Kendrick is pointing out It's also been a little bit diluted, right? That song has been used in a commercial for Nike its potency has been diminished by the same commercial forces that it protests.

Maybe that's why Kendrick is saying this revolution been televised. His whole rat battle has been televised. And he exists in this complicated duality about commenting on the nature of hip-hop. You know, on Dam, he has a sample of Fox News deriding Kendrick Lamar for being too violent and misogynistic and all this kind of stuff, right? Right. Lamar state his views on police brutality with that. line in the song, quote, and we hate the po-po, want to kill us in the street for show. Oh, please.

I don't like it. And on this track, he's also willing to give us all of the beef, the rap battles, saying, this is how we do it in hip-hop. It is about going over the top. And at the same time, throughout the rest of the record, he's wrestling with messages of God and faith and responsibility, which is sort of turning to his critics and shaking their hand temporarily while also playing the other side and not afraid to just give us some great beef. Yeah, just another thing that makes me think that he's become like more anti-industry or wants

to reform the industry from the inside is the people that he picked to be on the album. You know, these are local L.A. rappers that before this album came out, nobody outside of these neighborhoods and maybe a little outside, but on the West Coast, we know some of these artists. But now the world knows these artists. They're billboard charting artists now. Like lefty gunplay who's featured on this track. Exactly. Crazy.

Crazy. Scary. Hilarious. Crazy. Scary. Spoky. Spoky. Spoky.

Scary. All right. So the whole time I'm listening to this, I was like, yo, this is so familiar. So familiar. And it's because I grew up in the Bay Area at a time where Haifie movement was the thing. And there was a song from this group called the D.Bs. It was featured in E40, who Kendrick has so much love and reveres E40 a lot. They've shared songs together, and E40 was the voice during the pop out in between sets.

So anyway, he loves E40. He loves Bay Area music. And this lefty gunplay part sounds familiar because I think it's a flip on this song called Stewie by the DVs featuring E40, a song that can. came out in 2006. What? Crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious, crazy, hilarious, crazy, spooky, spooky, spooky, spooky, hilarious, crazy, scary.

The whole time I was like, why am I saying bananas at the end? Because I, yeah, there it is. So if you know, you know. If you know, you know. Yeah, I feel like at this point we've reached that Super Bowl aesthetic that Brandon was talking about earlier. We've got this sample flip. We've got these lyrics that are simultaneously hyping you up, but also hyperlocal and like kind of merging those two things. I feel like this moment in the track brings together so many of the larger themes of this album that we've been talking about

while never losing that connection to dance and to like just feeling it in a deep way that has been the overriding arc of this whole thing. So we've got a whole. Turn his TV off. Ain't no other king in his rap thing next siblings. Nothing but my churring. One shot they're disappearing. I'm in a city.

So we've got mustard. Mustard. We've got a whole new sample. We've got the black hole overture by John Barry. We've got a very strange thing to say, potentially at the Super Bowl. Turn this TV off. Turn this TV off. And then, you know, just continuing in his game,

he compares himself to one of the rap grates by interpolating the notorious VIG. Did you guys keep how he's sprinkling in his rap thing they're just a parent. Ain't you guys peep how he's sprinkling in some of the like football references. He's like flag thrown like pass interference and At the end, he says, you know, walking New Orleans with the etiquette of L.A. Right, the Super Bowl's going to be in New Orleans with the etiquette of L.A. yelling. Right. The Super Bowl is going to be in Orleans.

Right. We can safely say that Kendrick Lamar himself knows that this is going to be his Super Bowl jam. So we go from the biggest stages in the world to the hyper-local. I feel like he's pulling something off with GNX that it makes it more than just an album, even if it's not a concept album, I think he is making a blueprint for this difficult balancing act of artistry and accessibility with tracks like Squamolop, Luther, TV off. He's showing us that you can have lyrical depth and mass appeal. He's got bold hooks. He's got layered production. He's got the thematic richness of rap's biggest storyteller. I think that Kendrick Amar is pulling off a hat trick. He's won the biggest rap battle in decades.

Check. He has won the Super Bowl. Check. And he's just released a late in the game contender for biggest pop record of 2024. Check. Switched on Poff is produced by Randon Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineered by the great one-of-a-kind. Brandon McFarlane. Thank you.

Thank you. Illustrations by Irez Gottlieb. Remember with the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine, and subscribe at NYUmag. com slash pod we got into a few of the tracks off gnx but there's so much more to say and even in the tracks we did talk about i feel like there's so much more to say every one of these lines is like a portal to multiple musical dimensions Nate has been capelled we have just skimmed the surface so hit us up on social media at switch jump hop and tell us what you're hearing on this masterpiece of an album we'll be writing more about it on our substock you can subscribe to our

newsletter on our website and we'll post a link and the show notes. And we'll be back actually on Friday with a special holiday episode. Oh, yeah. A Real About Face. We're going to be listening to the biggest holiday new releases of the year. We're going to rate them on a scale of one to five sleigh bells. Over under on the Kendrick Lamar holiday album Surprise Drop.

It's never going to happen. So we'll see you in Friday. And until then, thanks for us for listening.