"Untitled Unmastered" Review

Few hip-hop artists in recent years have received higher praise than King Kunta himself, Kendrick Lamar.

The Compton emcee’s major label debut “Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City” cemented him as one of the most insightful voices in his genre, while his follow-up, last year’s “To Pimp a Butterfly,” offered what might be pop music’s most impactful examination of racial injustice in America since Public Enemy in their prime.

Now, less than a year later and with some twitter encouragement from Lebron James, Lamar’s record label Top Dog Entertainment has created a compilation of 8 unreleased tracks from the recording sessions of “To Pimp a Butterfly,” called “Untitled Unmastered.”

When details about this project first began to leak, they inspired some knee-jerk apprehension. Eight unnamed tracks accumulating to a fleeting runtime of 34 minutes, each one lacking studio polish?

The only recent success to come out of this method of album construction is Radiohead’s “Amnesiac” in 2001, a record comprised entirely of runoff from their prophetic “Kid A” the year prior. “Amnesiac” is a decent album, to be certain, but still only the coolest / most deluded of Radiohead fanboys would place it on the same pedestal as its predecessor.

So the initial fear that “Untitled Unmastered” would be the audio equivalent of table scraps is kind of justified. But, fortunately, with this record Lamar has managed to raise the bar for what’s expected from afterthought albums, in that it’s noticeably better than Thom Yorke mumbling over dour-ass techno for 45 minutes.

Kendrick kicks things off with a thunderous verse on “Untitled 01”, breathlessly spazzing out apocalyptic imagery over chaotic minimalism. Breakbeats and strings will leave listeners head-nodding their way through Revelations, while Kendrick paints a vivid picture of a world gone awry.

No birds chirping or flying, no dogs barking

The tallest building plummet, cracking, and crumbling

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and not even the dogs and birds feel fine.

No momentum is lost on the next track, which as you may have guessed is “Untitled 02.”

“Get God on the phone!,” Lamar demands over the production’s drones and sputters. Appropriate, since his flow on the second half of this song is downright otherworldly, as he takes a break from reminding us that the end is nigh to get out some much-deserved braggadocio. With anti-materialism undertones to boot.

“Untitled 05” is yet another highlight of this compilation, one that’s self-destructive themes and dark, jazzy tones have “To Pimp a Butterfly” written all over them. It’s exclusion from that album is almost baffling actually.

The track clashes tonally with the very next, “Untitled 06,” a lighthearted love-ballad featuring vocals from one-hit-wonder and, if you ask the right hip-hop fan, southern rap innovator CeeLo Green.

 “Untitled 07” is the album’s most ambitious moment, stretching over 8 minutes long and split into three distinct stylistic sections. Egypt Daoud, the 5 year old son of instrumental-smith Swizz Beatz, has a production credit on this track, showing clear evidence that the dope-beat-making gene does in fact exist. Science needs to get off its ass and isolate it pronto.

Finally, the album culminates with “Untitled 08,” which may be the most danceable track Lamar has ever made, featuring disco rhythms that will uptown funk you up.

The album begins with the apocalypse, then builds its way up to channeling “Off the Wall” era Michael Jackson. Go figure.

The only lull in this compilation occurs around “Untitled 03,” where the production lacks soul and Kendrick’s lyrics border on stereotyping, as he describes advice given to him by Asians and Native Americans, who of course just want a peace of mind and a piece of land respectively.

At a brisk 34 minutes, “Untitled Unmastered” can’t help but feel like a minor, ancillary work to “To Pimp a Butterfly.” However, it does have enough choice cuts and compelling moments to justify its existence, if only as a behind-the-scenes document of an artist at his creative peak.

Kendrick could have easily kept these songs to himself, releasing them on subsequent albums when a decent placeholder was necessary. Instead, he’s emptied his song book, given his fans a solid accompanying work, and ensured that his next official release will be completely from scratch.

4/5