Kendrick Lamar - untitled unmastered. (March 4, 2016)

Only Kendrick Lamar could release an eight-song EP, one consisting of demo tracks and incomplete thoughts, and have it debut atop the Billboard 200. That move is virtually unheard of within our chosen genre: it isn’t as though the man born Kendrick Duckworth is The Beatles. And yet, not only did he sell hundreds of thousands of copies, he also convinced music critics that his castoffs are worth listening to, which couldn’t have been that difficult, as said critics have been racing to praise K-Dot’s body of work before any other outlet just for the bragging rights. It’s a fucking mess, is what it is.

Lamar even named this EP untitled unmastered., not even bothering to name any of the songs, pulling one of the greater troll moves of the past decade. How does one go about convincing others that their trash would be considered treasure to you? Because I have a bunch of abandoned write-ups and other projects that I’d like to unload on the next unsuspecting consumer, please.

untitled unmastered. follows Lamar’s third full-length album, To Pimp A Butterfly, released just a year prior, and (the vast majority of) its eight songs were conceived during the recording sessions for that particular project. It consists of Lamar verses that, I assume, wouldn’t have fit onto any of his other efforts, and were just so good that K-Dot needed people to hear them immediately, as none of these tracks ended up on his next album, DAMN. Again, this is my assumption: I am not privy to the conversations between TDE and Aftermath/Interscope, so I have no idea if releasing an EP’s worth of leftovers was our host’s idea or an attempt by Dr. Dre to earn a quick million before Easter 2016.

At the very least, untitled unmastered. presents concepts that could have theoretically been completed by Kendrick eventually. Each track follows a similar blueprint as the tracks on To Pimp A Butterfly, utilizing the jazzy, funky sound of that project while working in contributions from many of the same contributors who assisted on what most critics feel to be a “classic” album. His lyrical motivation is drawn from multiple sources, but his observations of societal ills seems to be the most influential muse, as Kendrick chooses to use his platform to speak out against the problems of our world.

At least, that’s what he does when he isn’t talking about “pussy juice”. Seriously, that line on Jay Rock’s Follow Me Home was just fucking nauseating.

There’s no need for the introductory paragraphs to be longer than the album they’re describing, so let’s jump right into it.

1. UNTITLED 01 | 08.19.2014 (FEAT. BILAL & ANNA WISE)

Curious for an unmastered song to come complete with a (pretentious as fuck) intro and outro that don’t follow the same musical structure as the proper track. Said intro, performed by Bilal, who is clearly relishing the opportunity to sound perverted as shit, is so awful that I almost shut down this entire operation, and that was before K-Dot even takes to the microphone. When he finally shows up, he spits a lengthy one-verse wonder over an interesting Ritz Reynolds instrumental that doesn’t exactly bang, but gets the job done nicely, as our host describes the end times as a consequence of sin. Kendrick spends the length of the track speaking to his God directly, even telling them that he “made To Pimp A Butterfly for you”, a weirdly meta tactic that calls into question just when this track was even recorded: on the date referenced in the song title, To Pimp A Butterfly hadn’t even yet been released. This wasn’t bad, but it’s far from a complete song, bookends be damned.

2. UNTITLED 02 | 06.23.2014

One of the better aspects of our chosen genre I’ve noticed ever since putting pen to paper is how it has evolved to such a degree that the very concept of what makes a song a “song” has been redefined many times over. I’m all for artistic growth, thinking outside the box, and all of those buzzwords, but this particular track isn’t anywhere close to a “song”, which may help explain why it never ended up on a proper album, which is to say it’s weird to criticize it today, but by gum, I’m going to still give it a shot. Ostensibly about the disconnect between his life at home in Compton and his then-burgeoning career as a megastar, the Cardo and Yung Exclusive-produced “Untitled 02” instead features K-Dot meandering about his brain, pulling together phrases that rhyme just because he can, and some of it makes sense, and a lot of it does not. His sing-talking during the first two verses sound like a terrible Anderson .Paak impression (and that’s a dude I’m still not sold on as of yet), and his transition to spitting a (decent) verse is jarring, to say the least. I don’t mind folks playing with the very concept of song structure, but why Kendrick… I’m sorry, I mean “Cornrow Kenny” saw fit to release this clearly incomplete thought is beyond me.  We as hip hop heads don’t always need to know how the sausage is made.

3. UNTITLED 03 | 05.28.2013 (FEAT. BILAL, MANI STRINGS, & THUNDERCAT)

Okay, this one I kind of liked. K-Dot stans will recognize this as the song their hero performed on the very last episode of The Colbert Report, one that had nothing to do with the album he was supposed to be promoting at the time, To Pimp A Butterfly. Astronote’s music catches its groove fairly quickly, as does our host’s bars, which detail hoe he (representing mankind, but he may as well be talking about the United States) is a melting pot of cultures that the white man continues to take advantage of to this day. Sure, he tries to make it specific to his situation by talking about selling albums, but anyone breathing could figure out what he’s really trying to say. And he does so effectively: this wouldn’t have really fit onto any album he’s released, but Kendrick still has a keeper here. That certainly is a lengthy list of collaborators for a song that doesn’t even stick around for three minutes, though: I’m hoping they were all compensated very well for their time.

4. UNTITLED 04 | 08.14.2014 (FEAT. LANCE SKIIIWALKER & SZA)

Basically an interlude, which makes its inclusion on this compilation fairly questionable. SZA’s vocals dominate throughout, while Kendrick Lamar whispers softly in the background, delivering random thoughts that are undoubtedly considered to be “deep” in critical circles. Kendrick is then subbed out for guest (and labelmate) Lance Skiiiwalker, who takes the concept of “I don’t know, just make some shit up” seriously as the instrumental (credited to Thundercat, Sounwave, and Lamar himself) alters around him. Although this wasn’t bad, exactly, it’s also not a song, and doesn’t really belong as a separate audio track. Frequent collaborator Terrence Martin once described to Complex how he and Kung-Fu Kenny wrote this one while ingesting “heavy ramen, organic vodka, and 60-year-old cognac”. And this is what you managed to conjure up? I’m assuming all of those carbs just made them tired and they rushed through this effort just to get home to their comfy beds.

5. UNTITLED 05 | 09.21.2014 (FEAT. PUNCH, JAY ROCK, SZA, BILAL, & ANNA WISE)

Sounwave and Terrace Martin’s percussion-heavy, jazzy musical backdrop drives this particular untitled track, which is both inclusive and esoteric in its discussion of societal ills and how different people can find themselves impacted. Anna Wise kicks things off with some vocals that are then horribly, hilariously maligned by K-Dot, before he stops bullshitting and starts flat-out rapping, which he tends to do best. Throughout the three verses, he shares the spotlight with both fellow Black Hippy Jay Rock and TDE’s label president Punch, both of whom adhere to the Kung-Fu Kenny formula of verbose, abstract rhymes that provide an alternative way of seeing the bullshit in the world. There are no weak links here: shit, the only part of this that sucked for me was how it abruptly ended.

6. UNTITLED 06 | 06.30.2014 (FEAT. CEE-LO)

I mean, it’s a song about embracing what makes you unique. It’s definitely not a bad topic of discussion: hell, with the way the world has been turning lately, a reminder is both necessary and helpful. But I didn’t care for the vehicle, which seems artificially optimistic, as though the beat and the lyrics were composed on entirely separate different planets but found themselves smashed together anyway. -Lo Green’s crooning, while nice (he’s always had a good singing voice) sounds hollow, as though he doesn’t believe in his own words, but he also doesn’t believe that raping someone who is unconscious even qualifies as “rape”, so fuck that guy. K-Dot’s contributions to his own song are alright, but interestingly enough, the subject matter seems too limited in scope for our host to ever truly come out of his shell. (The instrumental was composed by Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, which deserves mention, and this was an unfinished piece the two were noodling around with that Kung Fu Kenny happened to hear the demo for and enjoyed, asking to use it for To Pimp A Butterfly. The actual final version, a song entitled “Questions” that features Cee-Lo but without any Kendrick Lamar contribution, appears on their recent album The Midnight Hour. I'd like to give a quick shout-out to the press release that graced my inbox for all of that backstory - we did it, guys!)

7. UNTITLED 07 | 2014-2016 (FEAT. TAZ ARNOLD, EGYPT, & SZA)

All K-Dot projects are required to have at least one epic track of indeterminable length, and untitled unmastered. is no different, as “Untitled 07” consists of three separate parts, which is likely why this is the one song on the project that doesn’t have a completion date attached. The first act was isolated and released to radio as untitled unmastered.’s lone single, which makes sense, as it sounds the most like conventional hip hop and even comes with a catchy chant that repeats the word “levitate”. The middle portion, likely the part co-produced by Egypt, the son of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, as he makes a brief cameo, features the more rappity-rap Kendrick Lamar that hip hop heads prefer, while the finale consists of some demo vocals K-Dot croons with his collaborators, as they build a song from scratch over a melancholy guitar chord, the exact opposite of the levitating he was doing just six minutes prior. There’s a full circle of life present on this one, folks, and it’s decent, if a bit exhausting to sit through.

8. UNTITLED 08 | 09.06.2014 (FEAT. THUNDERCAT)

The final song of the compilation was performed by our host on a different late night talk show hosted by a white guy, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. I can imagine this as a semi-hit had it appeared on To Pimp A Butterfly, in that way people loved “i” or “Alright”, as Thundercat and Mono/Poly’s beat is a fair amount of funky. But Kendrick’s bars of financial woe have been done numerous times, and he doesn’t contribute any new or original take, so while it’s an interesting afterthought, it evaporated from the memory like so many Spider-Men being held in Tony Stark’s arms.

FINAL THOUGHTS: It’s tough writing a critique of untitled unmastered. because it’s painfully obvious that these songs aren’t in any condition to be graded, which is kind of a brilliant move on the part of our host. This project strikes me as a compilation of thoughts that Kendrick couldn’t get out of his head, and maybe he figured unleashing them unto the world would free him from the witch’s curse or something. That isn’t to say there aren’t any worthwhile ideas and concepts presented here: this is Kendrick Duckworth we’re talking about, after all, and the man doesn’t seem to make any moves without carefully plotting them out first. My biggest issue with the songs on untitled unmastered. is that the material presented is akin to the type of stuff record labels would tack on to overstuffed deluxe reissues of your favorite albums, with the demos and outtakes that tend to come with them. Aftermath/Interscope/TDE merely found a way to convince people to pay attention to them when they didn’t really have any new K-Dot stuff worth sharing: dropping this EP wasn’t an artistic statement, it was purely motivated by the almighty dollar, and for that reason, it should be shunned, even though there were a couple of songs on here that were alright. How would you feel if you were scammed into buying an “album” consisting of incomplete leftover songs that weren’t considered good enough for public consumption the first time around? That’s kind of what I figured. I mean, if Aftermath had dropped a deluxe edition of To Pimp A Butterfly, including these songs would have been a no-brainer, but the way everything went down, it's like TDE is playing three-card Monte with the hip hop community. It’s a no from me.

BUY OR BURN? You’re fine skipping past this one. Projects such as these are for diehard stans only, anyway: if Kendrick had truly loved these songs, he would have, well, titled and mastered them, if nothing else.

BEST TRACKS: “Untitled 05 | 09.21.2014”; “Untitled 03 | 05.28.2013”

-Max

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