There’s jazz, funk, soul, all united by one of the most intelligent, nimble minds in music today. Meanwhile, untitled wasn’t built to carve you to the core, yet it also lives in the same beautiful, cathartic world. At the other end of the spectrum is “untitled 07 | 2014-2016”, in which three separate demo ideas are jammed together. The pieces, while often great, don’t really fit together, a pretty accurate description of the collection as a whole. On the slight “untitled 04 | ”, whispers, finger-snaps, and a SZA feature ripple the edges, Lamar never quite getting to a clear message about children and their hope for the future. That said, it examines the problem in a compelling way. But Bilal’s hook attempts to explain the true out: “I shall enjoy the fruits of my labor if I get freed today.” When performed on Colbert, Lamar insisted that the black man “won’t die, we multiply.” Here, the solution remains vague, perhaps the reason it hit the cutting room floor. He’s rhymed plenty about women and wanting to dominate the game. Lamar himself has spun enough lines about hoping for salvation, of trying to make a better future. (There’s a doubly cold feeling when he describes a CEO selling him for $10.99.) These all sound familiar. The Asian man looks for spiritual salvation, the Indian man finds it in preparing for the future, the Black man in sex, and the white man in money. “untitled 03 | ” spins around Anna Wise’s questions about different races and their philosophies, Lamar spitting verses aimed at showing their distinctions - yet, much like good kid, it’s telling that all four verses come out of Lamar’s mouth. But he’s aware that it’s never as simple as one man being punished for his “sins” - he’s far too aware of the way the underprivileged bear the brunt of the world: “Some of us never did wrong but still went to hell.” There’s always been a dose of guilt in Lamar’s rapping, delivering brilliant lines about earthly desires yet immediately aware of their spiritual ramifications. There’s a dark side to this sensuality, and the apocalyptic landscape that follows feels caused by it. The first verse of “untitled 01 | ” rasps and wheezes, laughs and sputters, coming on to a girl, a baby, a lamb. Religion played a large role in Lamar’s opus, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that an apocalyptic tone is set quickly here. That’s not to say that this set is messy or throwaway these were conceived as pieces of TPAB and, as such, run on the same themes, sounds, and messages. The eight tracks are culled from the TPAB sessions, presented at various sates of completion, as evidenced both by the stretches of studio talk and by the fact that some of the live performances are more focused. Untitled hit the internet with little to no warning, let alone pomp or circumstance. untitled unmastered., works instead like an addendum to TPAB, extra pieces fleshing out the already ornate, jam-packed album.
Heck, it wasn’t even really designed at all. While untitled unmastered. doesn’t have that same literary quality, it was never designed to. As a follow-up, TPAB stood on the platform built by good kid and looked outward, telling a story instead of America today and its relationship with black culture.
city, an album driven by evocative storytelling, intimate detail, shifting voices, and a compelling narrative arc. Much of the world was introduced to Lamar with good kid, m.A.A.d. Even a patch of unfinished demos gives extra clarity to Lamar’s masterpiece To Pimp a Butterflyand his career as a whole. to The Life of Pablo, but again, there’s a significant difference between Kanye’s tinkering and K-Dot’s surprise bit of context. Elsewhere, there have been some takes connecting the surprise release of untitled unmastered. But while that perspective honored his genius, it ignored King Kendrick’s intentionality.
KENDRICK LAMAR UNTITLED UNMASTERED TRACKS TV
Originally released on March 4th 2016, we revisit Adam Kivel’s classic review of these incredibly powerful tracks that weren’t to be.īack when he was just dropping these untitled songs on TV performances, one narrative held that Kendrick Lamar reigned so supremely that he could just let these sublime tracks lift into the ether without putting them on an album. Editor’s Note: Kendrick Lamar fans were still dissecting and analyzing his masterpiece, To Pimp a Butterfly, from the year before when the rapper released a compilation of unfinished demos that never made it onto that album.
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