’untitled unmastered’ is littered with free jazz, funk, soul and ominous, haunting soundscapes. Lamar is in no doubt at the forefront of this. What separates those who are destined to write timeless rhymes from those who are in it for the gold and glory is respect for what came before – those who laid the foundations upon which this new generation can build their art form. Either way this collection of cuts just goes to prove that Lamar is one of the generations greatest rappers. Which leads us back to untitled unmastered, either a masterfully planned release or a spontaneous drop on a hype-whim. Lamar fully rolled the hype train out of the station after his Grammys performance, which didn’t just touch upon racial stereotypes, but completely slapped the captivated audience, both at home and in the room, into having to actually acknowledge these issues.
#KENDRICK LAMAR UNTITLED UNMASTERED REVIEW FULL#
The fact that each track and the album itself have no solid names or identifications implies that this is not quite the tangible coherent piece we’ve been lusting for, but more of a potential thirst quencher until we have full on new material. It’s a “New record” in the loosest sense though, a collection of unreleased demos and tracks from sessions between 20, namely recorded through the release of ‘ To Pimp…’. For a while the sequel to 2015’s ‘ To Pimp A Butterfly’ has been more rumoured than a Frank Ocean follow up, until out of nowhere like a spitting star, we suddenly find ourselves with a new record. What’s worse is that if the sense of mystique in this specific instance actually drives greater recognition to these people than might otherwise have been the case, it’ll provide lazy/unscrupulous artists of the future a golden opportunity to weasel out of their own moral responsibilities by arguing that it’s actually better press to leave the credits off.Kendrick Lamar is one of those rare talents that can seemingly disappear and reappear as if nothing happened. There’s a limit to how seriously I can take biting social and political commentary from someone who releases an album full of collaborations with a slew of talented fellow musicians, engineers, and producers, but who steals their credit by putting nobody’s name on the CD but his own. Those good things notwithstanding, I can’t help feeling that this album’s title is missing a word: uncredited. I’m also a sucker for this mix’s method of generating an exaggerated depth illusion, where a massive distance is implied between the up-front elements (the point-source lead rap, super-dry, short-release kick, and wide stereo percussion) and background textures which seem to be made up primarily of a piano’s recirculating reverb. There are plenty of rappers who struggle to match that expressive range on a whole album, let alone one demo! There are so many ideas bursting out of Lamar’s recently released demo compilation, Untitled Unmastered, that it’s hard to know where to start when it comes to writing about it! For my part, the track ‘Untitled 02’ is probably the highlight, if only for the rapper’s tremendously inventive use of vocal deliveries and textures: the full-bodied “get God on the phone” at 0:39 versus the following verse’s pinched breathiness and quasi-yodelled phrase endings the chorusey falling group interjections which begin at 1:14 the strangely robotic triplet-based riff at “pimping and posing” the emphatic vibrato in the backing-vocal “ah” at 1:40 the laid-back patter of that extended third verse from 2:30 and the strung-out higher-register from “what if I certified” at 3:33.
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