If 2024 was the year of Kendrick Lamar, 2025 is already his victory lap. The Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper is still fresh off the release of his sixth studio album, “GNX,” gearing up for a highly anticipated Super Bowl performance and stadium tour with the reigning queen of R&B, SZA. He’s also getting ready for Grammys weekend, where he is nominated for a whopping five Grammys for his smash summer single, “Not Like Us.”
The album received rave reviews upon release, with hits like “Squabble Up,” the SZA collab “Luther” and “Reincarnated” all making it to the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. By far one of his biggest albums yet, Lamar’s winning streak shows no sign of letting up. One of the album’s biggest surprises is from the production side, highlighting one of the most unlikely music collaborations we’ve seen in quite some time.
Lamar linked up with one of pop’s biggest producers, Jack Antonoff, for the record, and while the album is far from a genre switch (this is inarguably a rap record), Antonoff’s influence certainly left an impact on the album, with it’s lush and expansive soundscape stands as one of its strengths. But that begs the question: who is Jack Antonoff?
Who is Jack Antonoff?
In case you didn’t know, Antonoff has been in the game for quite some time, coming up in the industry as a member of the pop band Fun. Remember the Janelle Monáe assisted hit song, “We Are Young,” from 2012? Yep, that was him. It wasn’t until after Fun went on hiatus however that he became one of the biggest producers in pop music.
Like in his music with Fun, Jack has established a specific hallmarks while working as as a producer (80s synths, high energy drum beats, to name a few). This doesn’t mean his collaborations are one-note, however, as he has worked with various artists across genres from rap, to country and pop.
Jack and Taylor
One of the his most frequent and important musical collaborators of Jack’s has been the one and only Taylor Swift. Since her pop debut album “1989,” Antonoff has worked with her on every album since, earning three Album of the Year Grammys for producing “1989,” “Folklore” and “Midnights.”
Ironically, the first album of Taylor’s that Jack worked on would eventually have a feature with Kendrick. The rapper appeared on the remix of Swift’s single “Bad Blood” back in 2015, perhaps a sign of what was to come almost ten years later.
Other Big Collaborations
From the outside looking in, it seems like Antonoff stays in the studio. He has worked repeatedly with the likes of Lana Del Rey, Lorde, The Chicks, Kevin Abstract and more. Recently, he produced Sabrina Carpenter’s latest album, “Short ‘n’ Sweet,” one of the biggest pop albums of the year, as well as Swift’s latest, “The Tortured Poets Department.” That’s right, with those two along with Kendrick’s album, he’s worked on three of the biggest records of 2024. Wow, indeed.
Work with Kendrick
Antonoff is listed on almost every track on GNX (11 out of the 12). His contribution to this highly anticipated album perhaps could have been predicted, as he was credited earlier this year on “6:16 in LA,” one of Lamar’s much-talked-about Drake diss tracks. Clearly, Lamar enjoyed working with him enough to bring him back for the album.
In an interview with Variety, Antonoff kept it coy about his experience in the studio with Lamar, saying that they are just, “living in the moment of that thing just existing.” Lamar is an elusive character himself, so Antonoff’s crypticness about the creative process behind “GNX’ does not come as a surprise, per se, but we do wish we could get some behind-the-scenes details about what became the biggest rap album of the year.
With an entire tour ahead of him and possible Grammy nominations for 2026, we’re sure this is not the last time we’ll hear about “GNX” and how Lamar found a musical sweet spot with Antonoff in what is shaping up to be the rapper’s musical imperial phase.