kendrck lamar untitled unmastered review

And when you hear lyrics like these blended with Pablo's bracing, spectral production, you can sense a pattern - a deliberate juxtaposition of lowbrow and highbrow, of vulgarity and religiosity - that could pass for the start of some grand artistic statement.īut I'm not buying it. He wants so badly to be taken seriously as a multimedia artistic visionary along the lines of 'Steve Jobs mixed with Steve Austin' (another instantly quotable Feedback lyric). He knows exactly the effect these dumb, base, tossed-off barbs will have. He sounds conflicted and uncertain about his role in society on untitled 01, a vivid depiction of the apocalypse: 'Atheists for suicide / planes falling out the sky / trains jumping off the track / mothers yelling 'He's alive!' ' (He's a Gemini, he reminds you across untitled, his mind always in two places at once.) This is most evident on the angular untitled 03, a dextrous dissection of the forces pulling him toward spirituality, equality, women and money. 'Stuck in the belly of the beast / can you please pray for me?' he raps in his dry rasp on untitled 02, sounding torn into pieces by all the attention he has received. 'Pimp, pimp? Hooray!' he chants here and there, amid woozy samples, free-jazz interludes and ghostly meditations on race and identity that wouldn't sound too out of place on Butterfly.

It's confusing and annoying, and it ensured the album would produce zero hit singles, though it does invite listeners to define each song for themselves.Īn odds-and-sods collection like untitled could only suffer in comparisons to Butterfly, and Lamar doesn't seem to deny it. All eight songs were dubbed 'untitled' with a track number and date - the 'get Top on the phone' song, for example, is untitled 02 |. Judging from Lamar's curious titling system, untitled was written and recorded during the same era as his 2015 masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly. On untitled unmastered., it's not clear why Lamar wants to get him on the phone, but it might have something to do with clearing out his notebook.

The 'Top' in 'Get Top on the phone' is Anthony 'Top Dawg' Tiffith, head of Lamar's label. Both release strategies were in their own ways self-indulgent - one clearly more so than the other - but these are the two most vital rappers in the game today (sorry, Drake), so there's no arguing both merit all the hype the music world gives them.

Kendrck lamar untitled unmastered review