LOS ANGELES — A few months ago, the Compton rapper Siete7x was up in the Bay Area shooting a music video. Around 4 a.m., he got a call from a mutual friend of Kendrick Lamar’s who told Siete to get to Conway Studios in Los Angeles. Now.
“He was like ‘Kendrick wants you to pull up.’ At first I didn’t believe him,” Siete said. “But me and my manager, we got in the car and drove six hours right back to L.A.”
That night drive turned into a session that got Siete lines on “dodger blue,” a soulful hometown-pride anthem and a local favorite on Lamar’s surprise-release “GNX.”
That album was a rich text of West Coast hip-hop history and invention, imbued with the venom of his recent feud with Drake. In just a week, it’s spun off singles like “squabble up” and “tv off” that have redefined the year in rap, just in time for Lamar’s Super Bowl appearance next year.
But “GNX” is full of cameos from emerging SoCal acts, who Lamar sees as crucial voices right now. The cast of guests — hailing from Compton to Baldwin Park and beyond — proves his ear is still close to the ground. For those local artists that got sudden shine from it, “GNX” feels like a piece of history — and a chance to show what they’re capable of.
“I feel like this album will be a classic for a new generation,” Siete said. “Kendrick gave me a shot. Now I’m even more motivated to show the world what I can really do.”
In the hours after “GNX” dropped last month, fans combed through the lyrics for new twists in the Drake war, and parsed its samples of Tupac Shakur, Luther Vandross and SWV.
While SZA and saxophonist Kamasi Washington are the only cameos on “GNX” that pop music fans are likely to recognize, the album is a comprehensive roster of SoCal scene-beloved veterans like Wallie the Sensei, AzChike and Hitta J3, and fast-rising local acts like Dody6 and YoungThreat.
When Lamar insists on “dodger blue” that you can’t “say you hate L.A. when you don’t travel past the 10,” these are the artists you’re missing if you don’t venture down.
“GNX” kicks off with evocative mariachi vocals from singer Deyra Barrera, whom Lamar discovered when she performed at Dodger Stadium. But he also nodded towards the city’s Latino rap scene, with guest bars from Maywood’s Peysoh on the album’s title track.
When Peysoh got the call, he said “I was chilling at my house, half asleep, when [Lamar] threw us on a FaceTime and was like ‘I need you later today.’ Even after the surprise release of the album, Peysoh said he was still a little dazed from the experience. Earlier this year, he’d finished a three-year stint in jail. To go from that to recording on a Kendrick album was head-spinning. “I’d been counted out and blackballed, and now it’s happening just like I told y’all,” Peysoh said.
