‘untitled 06’ is almost Al Green-like in its sumptuous loveliness and it’s about as close to a laid-back love song as Kendrick Lamar has ever come, with its flutes, seductive bass and wood-block percussion. In fact some of these tracks are straight up soulful. There’s nothing quite as unhinged or deliriously leftfield as on TPAB, it’s a much smoother ride. And that’s exactly what this release feels like: a window into his creative process. It’s possible that all it took was a tweet from LeBron James to twist his arm enough to go “fuck it” and drop a collection of demos onto Spotify, but you seriously can’t help but be impressed by the quality of these ‘unmastered’ demos, and the speed in which he managed to make them work as a cohesive whole. There are no preconceptions, each track is contextualised by manner of when they were brought to life by Kendrick Lamar. Come on! We haven’t been that well-behaved this year, what makes you think we deserve that?Įven though the running time of untitled unmastered only just breaks the 30 minute mark, and the tracks are essentially rough cuts from the last two years – mostly recorded around the same time as To Pimp a Butterfly – there’s some incredible work here that could easily find their place as stand-out tracks on any ‘proper’ Kendrick Lamar album.Ĭhoosing not to give the collection a title, and merely naming each track with a number and a date lets the work stand for itself. Although this is a surprise new release from Kendrick Lamar, it’s not a brand new album-length follow-up to To Pimp a Butterfly.

Kenridkc untitled unmastered review