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      Kendrick Lamar’s Never-Ending Battles

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicLast week, Kendrick Lamar released his sixth album, “GNX,” with no advance notice, unless you count the heavy anticipation that has been hovering around him since the apex of his battle with Drake earlier this year. A squabble over hip-hop ethics became a cultural touchstone, leaving Lamar with a No. 1 hit and Drake with spiritual and professional bruises.“GNX” extends the tension but doesn’t necessarily deepen it. Mostly, Lamar wants to get back to business as usual: making concept songs and albums that are musically complex and lyrically dense. The beef elevated him even higher into the stratosphere, but he doesn’t want it to define him or his career.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Lamar’s long wrestle with saviorhood, how his new album showcases both his loosest and stiffest tendencies, and the ways in which Drake is still grappling with the fallout of their battle.Guest:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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      Drake Accuses Universal of Boosting Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’

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      The Canadian rapper filed legal papers on Monday in New York and Texas accusing his record label of promoting “Not Like Us” ahead of Drake’s tracks.Drake’s war of words with Kendrick Lamar, through a vicious back-and-forth of diss tracks, generated some of the biggest headlines in rap this year.And now it has landed in court.On Monday, lawyers for Drake filed legal papers in New York and Texas accusing the Universal Music Group — the giant record company behind both rappers — of operating an elaborate scheme to to promote Lamar’s “Not Like Us” at the expense of Drake’s music, using bots to drive up clicks on streaming services and payola to influence radio stations.In documents filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan on behalf of one of Drake’s companies, Frozen Moments, the rapper’s lawyers said that Universal “launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves with a song, ‘Not Like Us,’ in order to make that song go viral, including by using ‘bots’ and pay-to-play agreements.”In a separate filing in Bexar County, Texas, lawyers for Drake — this time filing under his real name, Aubrey Drake Graham — said they were considering a defamation claim against Universal over Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” the hit song that represented the climax of Drake and Lamar’s rap war.In that song, Lamar took various swipes at Drake — including calling Drake and his crew “certified pedophiles.” Universal, Drake’s filing said, “could have refused to release or distribute the song or required the offending material to be edited and/or removed,” but chose to put it out instead.“UMG knew that the song itself attacked the character of another one of UMG’s most prominent artists, Drake,” the filing said, “by falsely accusing him of being a sex offender, engaging in pedophilic acts, harboring sex offenders, and committing other criminal sexual acts.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Digging Into Kendrick Lamar’s Samples

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      Listen to some of the most notable sonic references on “GNX,” from SWV, Luther Vandross and Debbie Deb.Kendrick LamarAJ Mast/The New York TimesDear listeners,On Friday, the rap superstar Kendrick Lamar surprised everyone by releasing his sixth studio album, “GNX,” without warning. It is a fitting finale to a triumphant year for Lamar, who emerged victorious by just about every measure from a high-profile beef with hip-hop’s pre-eminent hitmaker Drake and scored one of the biggest smashes of his career with the caustic diss track, “Not Like Us.” The Compton rapper’s victory lap will continue into new year, too: On Feb. 2, he’s up for seven Grammys. A week later, he is set to headline the Super Bowl halftime show.On his intricately layered 2012 breakthrough “good kid, m.A.A.d. city” and its grand 2015 follow-up, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” Lamar established himself as an artist capable of epic statements and sweeping concept albums. He also proved to be a musician who takes his time between releases, tinkering with his bars and polishing sonic worlds until they are as close to perfect as he can make them. “GNX,” though, is a different kind of Lamar album: It’s lean, mean and immediate. The beef with Drake, as my colleague Jon Caramanica suggests in his sharp review of “GNX,” seems to have made Lamar more reactive and nimble, bringing him into the present tense.Accordingly, “GNX” carries its sense of history more lightly than some of Lamar’s denser releases — though it is still an album in deep conversation with the past and present sounds of West Coast rap. In order to evoke that history, Lamar often turns to one of hip-hop’s signature arts: sampling.Today’s playlist compiles the sources of some of the most notable sonic references on “GNX” — from SWV, Luther Vandross and Debbie Deb — and follows up on them with Lamar’s own tracks, so you can hear the ways he and his producers flip them into something new. It also features a few samples from earlier Lamar hits.This playlist is just a brief introduction to the samples in Lamar’s discography — “GNX” alone is overflowing with them. But I hope it’s an invitation to listen more deeply to all the references, homages and historical conversations happening between the lines of his music.Also, a programming note: I won’t be sending out a new edition of the newsletter this Friday, because of the holiday. If you need a Thanksgiving playlist, might I suggest revisiting this one from last year?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘GNX’ Review: Kendrick Lamar Heads Back to His Comfort Zone on Surprise Album

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      After a war of words with Drake that yielded one of the biggest hits of Lamar’s career, the Los Angeles rapper is eager to shift back on his sixth album.Every so often, Kendrick Lamar steps into the present.The rapper, 37, is so mindful of hip-hop history, his role in it and the internal logic of the genre that it often seems like he’s performing on a different playing field than his ostensible peers. He’s a man on an island, and contentedly so.That’s part of what made his feud with Drake, which began in March and stretched through the spring and summer, so bracing. Not only did it place Lamar in the immediate present, and with real stakes on the line, but it underscored a streak of apparent disgust and resentfulness that emerges anytime he’s being pulled into the now. What’s happening in the moment is in essence a distraction from Lamar’s larger creative mission.His eventual triumph in the tug of war was led by the mainstream success of “Not Like Us,” one of the most popular songs of his career and, more important, an immediate contribution to the cultural zeitgeist. It was Lamar using Drake’s typical weapons against him — an acknowledgment that even if Lamar prefers not to pay attention to prevailing winds, he can ride them if need be.From a distance, “GNX,” his sixth album, which was released with no announcement on Friday, has some of that same immediacy. On the two opening tracks, “Wacced Out Murals” and “Squabble Up,” Lamar is rapping with the seething indignation he weaponized so effectively during the beef: “I’ll kill ’em all before I let ’em kill my joy”; “Before I take a truce, I’ll take him to hell with me.”But this is only one part of what Lamar is doing on “GNX,” an impressive but slight collection of flag-planting thumpers, puffed-chest posse cuts, conceptual experiments and moments of introspection — though nowhere near the intense internal interrogation of his last album, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.” It’s a palate cleanse of a sort, potentially casting off the last dregs of the Drake kerfuffles, and also, given its thematic unevenness, potentially a place holder between more substantive releases. Drake is, at most, a spectral presence on this album — there’s nothing as savagely personal as “Meet the Grahams,” the vicious salvo Lamar released in May. Lamar appears keen to move on.But what that means is that he’s eager to move back — back in time, back into history, back into his comfort zones. Taken literally, that’s Los Angeles, a city with rich musical history that Lamar has been scrupulously updating for over a decade now.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Grammys Snubs and Surprises: Charli XCX, André 3000, the Beatles and More

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      A look at the nominations’ unexpected and intriguing story lines, including the role of an absent Drake, the validation of André 3000’s flute music and overlooked gems.The names headlining this year’s Grammy Award nominations make a lot of sense: Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift are perennial favorites with imperial reach. Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan have stormed the mainstream. Shaboozey and Charli XCX made themselves inescapable.While there was once a time when it was easy to argue that the Grammys were out of touch, barely attempting to be an accurate representation of popular music in a given year, the major acts of 2024 are all accounted for. Shedding some of its fusty baggage under the Recording Academy chief executive Harvey Mason Jr. and a slate of new industry voters, the awards show has brought itself more or less in line with the Billboard charts, radio and streaming services, centering the celebrities of the moment.Still, it’s the Grammy Awards — not everyone can be happy. So after poring over the 94 categories that make up the 67th annual class of nominees, The New York Times’s pop music team — the reporter Joe Coscarelli, the chief pop music critic Jon Pareles, the pop music critics Jon Caramanica and Lindsay Zoladz and the Culture editor Elena Bergeron — were left with a few lingering questions: Is Beyoncé’s cross-genre domination really warranted? What are the Beatles doing here? And have the Grammys gotten too safe?We broke down the richest — and most baffling — story lines, snubs and surprises.Sabrina Carpenter’s success on the charts was mirrored in her Grammy nods: six of them.Emma Mcintyre/Getty Images for CoachellaA Mirror to the MainstreamJOE COSCARELLI I must admit, I’m almost sad at how predictable the Big Four categories — album, record and song of the year, plus best new artist — are these days, and this year in particular. Back in my day — not that long ago! — Beck was beating Beyoncé to close the night. And sure, you still have your occasional upsets by Jon Batiste (album of the year, 2022) or Bonnie Raitt (song of the year, 2023). But the odds of a truly destabilizing major win in February feel quite long now, likely by design.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Beyoncé and Young Women Pop Sensations Lead 2025 Grammy Nominations

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      Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter will compete in the biggest categories, along with Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar.Beyoncé and Taylor Swift will face off in all top categories at the 67th annual Grammy Awards, leading a pack of nominees that also features buzzy young female stars who have dominated the pop charts over the past year.With 11 nods, Beyoncé has more citations than any other artist this year, for “Cowboy Carter,” her gumbo of country, R&B and acoustic pop that spurred conversations about the Black roots of many American genres, including country.The other top nominees, with seven apiece, are Billie Eilish, a onetime teenage disrupter who is now a Grammy and Oscar darling; Kendrick Lamar, the rapper laureate, whose nominations stem from a no-holds-barred battle of words with Drake; Post Malone, a pop shape-shifter gone country (and who appeared on both Beyoncé and Swift’s latest albums); and Charli XCX, the British singer-songwriter and meme master whose digital-nostalgic iconography was borrowed by the Kamala Harris campaign.Swift has six nominations, as do Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan — two of this year’s fresh pop sensations, each receiving their first Grammy nods.The awards ceremony is set for Feb. 2 in Los Angeles.The biggest contest this year, at least in terms of celebrity wattage, is Beyoncé vs. Swift. Both are juggernauts in the culture and at the Grammys. With 32 career trophies, Beyoncé, 43, has already won more awards than any other artist, and is now also the most-nominated person, with 99. Yet she has never taken album of the year, despite four previous nods.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Grammy Nominations 2025: See the Full List of Nominees

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      Artists, albums and songs competing for trophies at the 67th annual ceremony were announced on Friday. The show will take place on Feb. 2 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.Beyoncé is the top nominee for the 67th annual Grammy Awards with 11 nods for her genre-crossing “Cowboy Carter.” The LP and its songs will vie for record, song and album of the year, as well as competitions in pop, rap, country and Americana categories.The superstar — who has already won more Grammys than any other artist — leads a pack of contenders that includes Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar and Post Malone (all with seven nods apiece), followed by Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Taylor Swift, who have six each.The ceremony, which is scheduled for Feb. 2, 2025 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, will recognize recordings released from Sept. 16, 2023 to Aug. 30, 2024.Here is a complete list of the nominations, which were announced on Friday by the Recording Academy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Popcast: Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl, Sabrina Carpenter on Top

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicOn this week’s episode of Popcast, the pop music critic Jon Caramanica and the pop music reporter Joe Coscarelli discuss the week in music:The announcement that Kendrick Lamar will headline the halftime show at Super Bowl LIX, to be held in February in New Orleans, and how it extends his year of tension and musical beef with Drake.Sabrina Carpenter’s sixth album, “Short n’ Sweet,” which is No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, and has helped her break into pop’s top tier.The career of the Atlanta rapper Rich Homie Quan, who died last week at 34.Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More