It goes without saying that Kendrick Lamar has been a distinct feature in music press of late. Beyond the accolades that accompany being arguably the most prominent rapper of this generation, his public feud and rapid-fire exchange of diss tracks with Drake earlier in the year kept K.Dot squarely at the fore of industry conversation and controversy. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that Lamar skipped the media machine entirely for the release of his latest album GNX, which landed on November 22nd preceded by only a single social media teaser 30 minutes prior to dropping. GNX is a more straightforward rap album than his previous Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, which was itself more of a high-concept hip-hop collage in line with his seminal To Pimp A Butterfly – the latter being hailed by many as one of the greatest albums not only of recent years, but of all time. Despite its return to a simpler musical approach, GNX is far from a step backward for Kendrick, featuring some of his most compelling and inventive lyricism to date. Nowhere on the album is his poetic ingenuity more literary than on “Reincarnated,” a kaleidoscopic journey through layer upon layer of incident and allusion. On “Reincarnated,” past and present, characters and archetypes, author and invention all blend together from verse to verse and scene to scene, shifting into each other with the logic of a dream.
“Reincarnated” is, on its surface, a semi-autobiographical story of one soul’s journey through its titular karmic process, embodied in a few historical African-American musicians until finally settling on Kendrick himself. That said, Kendrick is no stranger to spiritual themes and uncompromisingly honest self-appraisal, and “Reincarnated” sublimates fact and fiction, history and myth together into an examination of not only of Lamar’s own soul, but of the entire human condition, with an eye towards eternity. Its tonal content, founded on a Tupac sample (at once a homage from Kendrick to one of his influences, and simultaneously another through-line from one musical epoch to another), provides a soulful piano-driven backdrop on top of which Kendrick spins his tale.
Our protagonist’s first “incarnation” is a licentious 1940s Bluesman (most probably John Lee Hooker, whose shared nickname “Boogie Man” Kendrick has embraced in the past). Lamar’s affected vocal gristle is all but tongue-in-cheek in its recollection of then-common stylings in the Blues/Jazz idiom. The soul’s next regeneration is that of a Jazz diva in the throws of a debilitating heroin addiction – a dead ringer for Billie Holiday. Both characters share stories of profound potential squandered by temptation and vice, along with the explicit recurring theme of rejection by a father figure. These stories provide the archetypical framework into which Lamar fits himself shortly thereafter, dropping all vocal affectations as his story snaps to the present. Kendrick’s own piece of this account begins with a brief estimation of his own artistry, but quickly shifts gears into his own struggle to come to grips with a father’s rejection. He questions this heretofore silent father as to whether he has succeeded in overcoming the shortfalls both of his predecessors and his own youth. Suddenly the Father Figure responds to Kendrick’s call, instilled with a sense of otherworldliness and authority with a clever use of vocal double-tracking.
As the conversation progresses, it soon becomes clear that this exchange is no longer merely a discussion between Lamar and his temporal father, but a Job-esque trial of sorts before God himself. This wouldn’t be the first time Kendrick has had a mid-song chat with the Almighty – see To Pimp A Butterfly, specifically “How Much A Dollar Cost” where God accosts Kendrick in the guise of a spurned vagrant – but here it serves to elevate Kendrick’s contemplations to the highest echelons of universal consequence. It’s also here that he pulls his greatest conceptual trick yet as his reincarnated sojourner is revealed to be, originally, none other than Satan himself – by popular folk adage and Kendrick’s own estimation God’s “greatest music director,” returned to Earth again and again in a cycle of endless opportunities to correct his grand fall. Our protagonist pleads his own righteousness, at times vindicated and at other times rebuffed, and is admonished to dedicate himself to the pursuit of universal brotherhood – his eternal journey through time and sound culminating in the assertion that, in a sense, “every individual is only a version of you.” Kendrick ends both his metaphorical narrative, and his own meta-textual spiritual journey, with a vows to use his gifts to foster harmony and understanding, and an assurance of triumph over evil worldly, otherworldly, or otherwise by having both literally and figuratively rewritten the story of the Devil – which now includes by extension his own story, that of his community, and, finally, that of everyone else – to, in his words, “take our power back.”
“Reincarnated” is nothing short of a tour de force, featuring Kendrick’s unique lyrical vision at its most intricate yet. Within the bounds of its four-minute-long textual mosaic, Kendrick crafts a unifying record of his own history through to African-American musical history at a large, through to all human history itself and beyond, addressing his own inner demons in the context of the first and greatest sin in an epic that is ultimately not only of one of reincarnation, but of redemption.