In November 2024, Kendrick Lamar’s sixth album, “GNX,” arrived as big records often do these days — with little warning, other than a teaser video that dropped less than an hour before the surprise release. But for those under the rapper’s cone of silence for the past three years, “GNX” was the culmination of hard work and collaboration that met the moment head-on.
Lamar, fresh from arguably the most high-profile beef in hip-hop history (the one with Drake that reached a fever pitch last year), delivered an album that invoked the sounds of West Coast rap music while re-centering the national spotlight on his native Compton. The reaction was nothing short of rapturous: He has secured nine Grammy nominations for 2026, including album of the year and song and record of the year, and he performed at the Super Bowl last February, taking a victory lap on the biggest stage in the world.
Lamar, of course, couldn’t have done it without his musical hive mind, primarily Sounwave, Jack Antonoff and Mustard, who are collectively being honored as Variety Hitmakers’ Producers of the Year. Each has had stellar runs as titans in different corners of music: Sounwave has been Lamar’s most consistent production collaborator since 2009 and contributed to records from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé; Antonoff only recently came into Lamar’s orbit but has become pop’s go-to collaborator on albums from Sabrina Carpenter and Lana Del Rey; Mustard brought the sound of contemporary L.A. hip-hop to records like Lamar’s “Not Like Us” and “TV Off” after years of architecting the style with artists like YG and Ty Dolla $ign.
Together, they helped craft one of the most singular and impactful rap albums in years. Work on “GNX” began almost immediately after the release of Lamar’s 2022 album, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” with the rapper collaborating closely with Sounwave and Antonoff, a pair who first connected around 2015 for Bleachers’ sophomore album, “Gone Now.” “We have such a specific language between us, me and Sounwave,” says Antonoff. “And then we developed our own thing, the three of us. You have it or you don’t with people. When you have it, it’s really magical; when you don’t, you go home.”
The trio spent years toiling on what Sounwave estimates was somewhere between 80 and 100 songs, later pared down to the dozen that made “GNX.” They would snag batches of time in the studio and created their own “weird little secret society,” recalls Antonoff, not in pursuit of a specific sound but seeing where the process took them. “The beginning of it was throwing paint on the wall,” says Sounwave. “And it started to form this massive funky West groove that we love because [Kendrick and I are] from Compton. And in that, I started to realize the people who we should bring in to push it even further, like the Mustards, the Jacks. … I was very fortunate to have these friends who are very talented to push it to the next level.”
Along with “Not Like Us,” which dropped at the height of Lamar’s contretemps with Drake, two songs on “GNX” — “Luther” featuring SZA and “TV Off ” featuring Lefty Gunplay — became among the biggest hits this year, according to Luminate. “Not Like Us” set the stage for the shape of the album, released to the surprise of Mustard after he’d been sending Lamar beats for years. “I knew that I couldn’t send Kendrick normal Mustard beats,” he says. His instrumental that became the backbone for Lamar’s “Hey Now,” for instance, had been passed over by Quavo and YG. (Ty Dolla $ign cut an unreleased song over the beat.) “I was sending [Kendrick] all types of shit, anything that I thought sounded like something that I’ve never made before. That’s what I was going for, because Kendrick is different.”
Amid the swaths of ideas that Mustard would text Lamar directly were two instrumentals later combined to make “TV Off,” which went viral on the back of Lamar screaming Mustard’s name at the beat switch. Mustard recalls creating the first half of the song in the same month that he produced “Not Like Us,” and he worked on the second part as an idea for his own album. As with “Not Like Us,” he heard the completed “TV Off ” for the first time along with the rest of the world. “I never asked Jack or Wave who put those two beats together, or Kendrick,” he says. (Sounwave says it was Lamar’s idea.) “I care, but I don’t care. I was just like, that was great.”
The “GNX” magic happened in the studios where Lamar, Antonoff and Sounwave collaborated, particularly for “Luther,” one of the biggest hits of 2025. The record is built around a sample of Luther Vandross and Cheryl Lynn’s 1982 rendition of “If This World Were Mine,” a song that Lamar and Sounwave had wanted to flip since 2017’s “Damn.” “Luther” came together as something of a groupthink exercise: Producer Roselilah sent a pack of beats mined for a kick and snare; Sounwave chopped up the sample; M-Tech replayed chords on the piano; Ink came up with melodies for SZA’s part. It was a “spiritual” experience, says Sounwave, “because of how everybody just fell in. Everything we added was just like the perfect missing piece to that record.”
Antonoff, for his part, densely laid in bits of guitar and Mellotron to build out the world of “Luther.” “If you really listen to the record, obviously Kendrick and SZA are right there and the beat’s right there and the melody,” he says. “But there’s all this stuff dancing around, like in between them. I wanted to go overboard with the presentation of how special it could be. I ended up sitting alone for a really long time carving out all these little spaces.”
The meticulous nature of “GNX” only intensified as the record sped toward completion. Antonoff recalls working on final mixes as late as four in the morning, just hours before the album’s release. Its impact was instantly tangible — “Luther” held court atop the Billboard Hot 100 for 13 weeks, while “Not Like Us” picked up Grammys for song and record of the year. But for the producers who helped bring “GNX” to life, it signified that taking risks — sonically and creatively — was the only path forward.
“It basically shows that there’s no boundaries,” says Sounwave. “We hate to just keep doing the same thing over and over. It’s something we kind of thrive off of, just reinventing yourself. Do stuff that makes it exciting, and the people who supported you will be excited with you. I kid you not: Yesterday there was a 60-year-old woman driving down the street rapping a ‘GNX’ song word for word. Just to see that my home is still playing it as if it just came out … that’s special.”
HITMAKERS
Jack Antonoff, producer
Sounwave, producer
Mustard, producer
luther featuring SZA (No. 2)
SONGWRITERS: Kendrick Lamar, Solána Rowe, Ink, Sam Dew, Mark Anthony Spears, Jack Antonoff, Roshwita Larisha Bacha, Matthew Bernard, Kamasi Washington, Scott Bridgeway, Marvin Gaye
PRODUCERS: Sounwave, Jack Antonoff, roselilah, M-Tech, Bridgeway, Kamasi Washington
LABEL: pgLang, under exclusive license to Interscope Records
PUBLISHERS: Kendrick Lamar Music (BMI), administered by Songs of Universal, Inc.; SZA
(BMI) – Songs of Universal, Inc.; Atia Boggs (Ink) – Sony/ATV Ballad, BMI; Samuel Joseph Dew / Greyscape Songs / Sony/ATV Ballad / Sony/ATV Music Publishing (BMI); Mark Anthony Spears p/k/a “Sounwave” individually and d/b/a HE PUBLISHING DESIGNEE OF MARK ANTHONY SPEARS (BMI) and SONY SONGS, a division of SONY MUSIC PUBLISHING (US) LLC (BMI); Jack Antonoff / Isimo Compositions / Universal Music Corp. (ASCAP); 6K Publishing, administered worldwide by BMG Rights Management (Benelux) B.V.; Matthew Bernard p/k/a “M-Tech” / Selfpublished (BMI); Ruchaun Maurice Akers / Universal Music Corporation (ASCAP)
Not Like Us (No. 8)
SONGWRITERS: Kendrick Lamar, Ray Charles, Sean Momberger
PRODUCERS: Mustard, Sean Momberger
CO-PRODUCER: Sounwave
LABEL: pgLang, under exclusive license to Interscope Records
PUBLISHERS: Kendrick Lamar– Kendrick Lamar Music (BMI), administered by Songs of Universal, Inc; Dijon McFarlane p/k/a “Mustard” – Mustard On The Beat Publishing/Songs Music Publishing (BMI); 10 Summers Publishing, LLC d/b/a Music of 10 Summers (BMI); Sean Momberger – Sean Mom Publishing / 300 RAINWATER MUSIC (BMI) c/o Songs of Universal; Mark Spears p/k/a “Sounwave” – Mark “Sounwave” Spears (BMI); Ray Charles – Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp., BMI
tv off featuring Lefty Gunplay (No. 13)
SONGWRITERS: Kendrick Lamar, Dijon McFarlane, Sean Momberger, Mark Anthony Spears, Jack Antonoff, Kamasi Washington, Larry Jayy, Jimmy Webb, John Barry, Jay Hawkins, Chris Martin, Christopher Wallace
PRODUCERS: Mustard, Sean Momberger, Sounwave, Jack Antonoff, Kamasi Washington, Larry Jayy
LABEL: pgLang, under exclusive license to Interscope Records
PUBLISHERS: Kendrick Lamar Music (BMI), administered by Songs of Universal, Inc.; Dijon McFarlane / Pay Mustard / SONY/ATV TUNES, a division of SONY/ATV MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC dba EMI APRIL MUSIC INC. (ASCAP); Sean Mom Publishing (BMI) administered by 300 Rainwater Music (BMI) & Warner Chappell Music.; Mark Anthony Spears p/k/a “Sounwave” individually and d/b/a HE PUBLISHING DESIGNEE OF MARK ANTHONY SPEARS (BMI) and SONY SONGS, a division of SONY MUSIC PUBLISHING (US) LLC (BMI); Jack Antonoff / Isimo Compositions / Universal Music Corp. (ASCAP)
