Folks are laughing, goofing around, and words emerge, about the government and getting pussy and the struggle to keep your head on straight and make something beautiful and life-affirming as if it’s all one thing. “The flattery of watching my stock rise/the salary, the compensation tripled my cock size / I run through the stop signs/with no brake fluid, just premium gas” he notes, adding “This is the future/the master mind/until my next album/more power to ya!” It’s followed by the sound of a gunshot – the sound that disappeared Martin, Malcolm, Trayvon and on – and a chillingly orphaned beat (composed, if stories are true, by Swizz Beats and Alicia Keys’ five-year-old son). Then, suddenly, you’re eavesdropping in a room, listening to the sound of a song being made up with a bunch of friends over a handful of bass notes. It’s a familiar riff concerning what fame does to your brain, delivered with unfamiliar verve, as Lamar tries to figure a sustainable way to embody King Kendrick. On “untitled 07,” around a hypnotizing chant of “levitate levitate levitate levitate,” a devil-on-the-shoulder character delivers a drug-addled come on, with the promise of dollars and various ecstasy flavors. The most telling track on untitled unmastered. may be its shaggiest. feels more like a prayer circle or hip-hop cypher than an album weighted down by a capital-C concept Read Review. The former lacks the firespitting Black Power outro the latter appears minus a final verse and outro, sacrificing fire for a tighter, more upbeat album-closer. Reviews of untitled unmastered by Kendrick Lamar, Surprise release from the Compton rapper consisting of eight demos recorded during the To Pimp A Butterfly sessions. Lamar premiered versions of “untitled 03” and “untitled 08” (then known as “untitled 2 (Blue Faces)”) on Colbert and Fallon, respectively, and they’re changed up a bit here. “untitled 01” is tagged 8/9/14, although Lamar rhymes about how he “made To Pimp A Butterfly for you,” referencing an LP that didn’t come out until nearly a year later. The songs are not titled per se, simply numbered and dated, although it’s unclear exactly when they were finished. But before we hit the two-minute mark he’s seeing rapists and murderers, “death faces screaming in agony,” “atheists for suicide/planes falling out the sky/trains jumping off the track.” And this is a jam about uplift. This eight-track, 35 minute set begins in a bedroom, incense burning, Lamar sexing up a lover over soul-jazz, bass-and-percussion foreplay. Of course, nothing’s that simple in the mind of Lamar, and after torching the Grammys, his embers are still popping.
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