Kendrick Lamar starts his exhilarating new album by complaining that someone vandalized a mural depicting his face — a mural depicting his face in triplicate, in fact — on the side of a Honduran restaurant in his Compton hometown.

GNX” is easily the most disciplined and direct music Kendrick Lamar has ever made, and if you really let yourself feel it, it might also be his most profound.

Midway through his snarling Drake diss, “Not Like Us,” Kendrick Lamar issued ... and the athleticism of a decathlete, “GNX” is Kendrick Lamar at his most compelling — a mosaic that indisputably reaffirms his status as the most dynamic spitter ...