What’s left to say about Kendrick Lamar? After two great independent albums he made his major label debut with Good Kid M.A.A.D. City, a massive concept album that skyrocketed to become the vanguard of modern hip-hop. Then he went and topped it with the masterful, revolutionary To Pimp a Butterfly last year, and it feels like the rest is gonna be history. He’s perhaps the biggest name in music right now, and I’d argue that he’s never made anything close to a bad song. He’s also a notoriously single-minded hard worker. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, he said that while he used to play videogames when he was a kid, now he spends his free time making music, always writing verses and freestyling. Perhaps he was exaggerating, but considering his output, the idea that he’s just always making music isn’t that unbelievable.
untitled unmastered. just about proves his claim. Coming less than a year after the multiple Grammy nominated To Pimp a Butterfly, this record is a collection of demos and unreleased tracks from throughout TPAB’s gestation, and many of them are essentially tracks that were cut from that album. As the title suggests, the songs are uncut and unmastered, raw and in their original form. While some of the tracks aren’t the best they could be, the fact that none of them necessarily sound like “rough cuts” is a testament to Kendrick and his collaborators’ skill in the studio, and sort of proves Kendrick’s skill as a rapper; it’s like the tracks and lyrics didn’t need any further work or mastering. They’re good enough the way they are.
While the record is essentially a collection of b-sides, it’s much more cohesive than a mixtape or any other collection. Many of the songs sound like they were meant to flow into one another, like at the end of “untitled 02,” where Kendrick raps “Alright, from the top!” before exploding into the delightfully grooving “untitled 03.” It may only be the unreleased extras from TPAB, but untitled unmastered. is a masterful collection of tracks that live up to everything we’ve come to expect from K-Dot — they’re smart, funky, haunting and staggeringly conceptual.
Like Kendrick’s previous work, untitled unmastered. is concerned chiefly with regret, personal inventory, faith and the role of race in America. Near the end of the first track, Kendrick raps that he’s “running in place trying to make it to church,” echoing lyrics from GKMC in which he struggles to reconcile his gangbanging with his grandmother’s religion. In “untitled 02” he laments that he’s “Done a lot of dumb shit in my past / Lord forgive me hope I don’t relapse.” On “untitled 03,” which first debuted live on the Colbert Report, multiple ethnicities give Kendrick advice on how to live a better life; the Asian man highlights the difference between him as a Buddhist and Kendrick as a Christian, and the importance of meditation; the Indian (Native American) talks about the importance of land and heritage, as well as making money off of that land; the Black man is immersed in the fantasy of sex and how he uses it to escape from the world; most incisive of all, the White man is consumed by greed and money, and talks about using Kendrick’s art to sell out.
“untitled 04” is an impassioned call against ignorance, and features almost no rapping from Kendrick, composed mostly of singing from SZA and Jay Rock. The next track starts with some smoky vocals, then launches into Kendrick’s assertive, swaggering verses. “untitled 05” is much less frenetic here than it was at the Grammys, where it was performed alongside “The Blacker the Berry” and “Alright” in a jaw-dropping cavalcade of intense imagery. Here it is expanded into something much more mellow and introspective, slowly unraveling into a calm conclusion.
“untitled 06” features some exquisitely soulful chorus work from the incomparable Cee-Lo Green, and honestly, it makes me wish the song had made it onto TPAB, because Cee-Lo is just about the only thing I can think of that’s missing from that album, considering that he’s perhaps the biggest name in modern soul.
“untitled 07” is, if not the best song on the record, definitely the most complex. It spans three different movements, starting with an A$AP Rocky-reminiscent cloud rap groove that lists all the things that “won’t get you high as this”: love, drugs, fame, chains, juice, Bentleys; it’s an anti-materialist manifesto about how worldly things won’t bring true enlightenment. The second movement, like most of To Pimp a Butterfly, is about rising above one’s circumstances to become a leader, an example of “black excellence.” Here Kendrick speaks about how Compton is “The murder capital where they murder for capital,” and how he’s worked to make it better. Part three is less conceptual than the previous two, and features background noise from K-Dot’s friends, just messing around in the studio. As Kendrick says, “we just jammin’ out.” This pretty much encapsulates the whole record: just a bunch of jam sessions where we get to hang out while Kendrick spits and freestyles with his friends. It’s all very casual and personal, unlike the drama of GKMC and the grandiosity of TPAB. With untitled unmastered., it’s just us and Kendrick.
After the exhausting “07,” “untitled 08” is a welcome relief of powerful energy. Originally performed on The Tonight Show, “08” is the best track on the record, and of all the songs features the groove most like what one hears on TPAB. It’s one of the only tracks where Kendrick raps from start to finish, and its jamming bassline will keep your head bobbing for all of its four minutes. It’s refreshing to hear a record where the best song comes last instead of first, but it’s also troubling that we have to wade through the rest of the record to reach something that meets and exceeds the benchmark Kendrick has set for himself.
untitled unmastered. isn’t spectacular, but it isn’t supposed to be. When Kendrick makes an album, he starts with a concept, and this record isn’t tied together by any concept. It’s a fascinating and intimate look at how Kendrick Lamar records and collaborates, and it offers a peek at how To Pimp a Butterfly evolved and the record it might have been. I could complain about how it doesn’t quite meet the standards Kendrick has set for himself, but that wouldn’t be fair. Any other rapper could release this as an album and be universally praised. That Kendrick manages this with just his b-sides is just incredible.
The record ends the way it starts: Kendrick yelps “Pimp pimp!” to which a crowd responds “Hooray!” While it was recorded concurrently with TPAB, now these lyrics read as a celebration of that album and everything it’s accomplished. No matter what you think of untitled unmastered., I think we can all agree with that sentiment. Pimp pimp hooray.
