As if 2015’s To Pimp A Butterfly wasn’t enough. Less than a year after releasing what may very well be one of the best hip hop records post-2010, Kendrick Lamar dropped another marvel on Thursday night.
In what has been a great chain of confusion and excitement, Spotify mistakenly released the album for a few minutes, removed it, then reports confirmed the official release a few hours later, less than a week after Top Dawg Entertainment hinted at a new Kendrick Lamar album expected to come out this month.
Untitled Unmastered is what appears to be an amalgam of old material which Lamar seems to have worked on between 2013 and 2016, and although each track dates back to a different period, they all seem too be fitting quite smoothly on the same record. The surprise album is not too eclectic, but just enough.
With yet another genius album, Lamar gives us a sort of alter ego to his previous full-length, a kind of toned-down, soft-core version of the critically acclaimed To Pimp A Butterfly. Nevertheless, through a chilled-out vibe, the Compton rapper still manages to address the issue he’s been known to tackle in his previous works, i.e. social and racial injustice as well as the hardship of getting through the troublesome environment that obstructs Compton’s youth’s full potential. And he does so and brilliant fashion.
As always, great samples, ill percussions and magical basslines, although this time around mixed with more lo-fi recordings, or demo-ish audio clips, which when fused with each track’s name (“untitled # | date”) reinforce the album’s title and main atmosphere.
Perfectly balanced between voluntary amateur and professional in its production, Kendrick Lamar only seems closer to his audience, and hints (perhaps a hint especially meant for his hometown’s youth) to the fact that anyone can prosper by following the “right path”.
Lamar had already previewed two songs off Untitled Unmastered, “untitled 02 | 06.23.2014” and “untitled 08 | 09.06.2014” during live performances, however no one expected the album to come out so soon. We couldn’t be happier, though.
Listen to those two songs along with the rest of the album below: