Kendrick Lamar Named His New Album After The Buick GNX For Very Personal Reasons

Next year’s Super Bowl halftime show performer just dropped a new album named after a pretty super car.

On Friday, Rapper Kendrick Lamar released “GNX,” which is named after the classic American muscle car.

The GNX was an advanced version of the Buick Regal-based Grand National that featured a 3.8-liter turbocharged V6 officially rated at 276 hp and 360 lb-ft, but understood to be more powerful than that.

It was one of the quickest cars in the world at the time and just 547 were built over a single model year.

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The cover of the album features Lamar standing next to a 1987 Buick GNX that he purchased earlier this year.

Lamar told Complex in 2012 that his father drove him home from the hospital in a Buick Regal when he was born in 1987.

“My pops put me on to rap,” he told the outlet. “When I was born, I came home from the hospital in an ’87 Buick Regal while my pops was bumping Big Daddy Kane.”

Lamar posted photos of his new car on Instagram in March with a caption that said “ye life get real tricky. no matter where you at with it. i never pick and choose what stories to relate to. all of them is relative. like my momma say tho. different strokes for different folks. a good ol saying can snap you back into reality sometimes. but in the moment of confusion, the best thing you can do is find a gnx. make you realize the only thing that matters in life is that original paper work. that TL2 code. 1 of 547.”

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The GNX had an original price of $29,290, but it has become a hot collector’s item over the years. The highest price paid for one was $308,000 for an example with 568 miles on the odometer, but that seems to be the peak as average sale prices have dropped about 25% since then.

As far as the album is concerned, it has 12 tracks and some critics are calling it Lamar’s best.