Untitled 7 feels like four songs instead of one. It’s also riskier, often more flawed, clearly unsure even of its own edits.

It’s jazzier than TPAB, and more free-form with its ideas too. The messaging is clear: this album is Kendrick giving us something new while avoiding the weight that comes with an “official” new record.Īnd it’s pretty clearly a project, not a record, something Kendrick has just experimented with.

Each track is simply called “untitled” and given a date, which often don’t coincide with events Lamar will specifically mention in the songs, rendering them totally meaningless.

This extreme sensibility lends itself to a perfect inversion of TPAB.Who saw this coming? Kendrick’s latest record doesn’t feel like a follow-up to To Pimp a Butterfly, nor does it feel like a collection of B-sides. In this vacuum-still very much under his direction-the band explores harsh, diminished, or otherwise musically uncomfortable territory. Kendrick Lamar is off to the side, leading from behind. Instead, we have more emphasis on the band surrounding him, such as the always wonderful Thundercat on bass, or vocalists like CeeLo Green and Bilal. Though this is his album, undoubtedly, the number of verses he has are surprisingly few. He is a ghost, a presence, more than a force. This extends to Lamar’s actual presence on the album. The references to-and voices of-artists such as Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy, Kamasi Washington, Flying Lotus, Parliament/Funkadelic, DJ Shadow, and other jazz, funk and soul artists feel far more important to the sound than Lamar’s own voice. More importantly, untitled unmastered feels heavily driven by the musicians who influence it. That clearly intentional discomfort and disorganization is also felt in the production and gnaws with a lack of resolution or closure. The vibe is that of an empty studio late at night, as if from a German Expressionist film from the 1920s, where the angles are harsh and unreal, while a psycho prowls the night. The lights feel too bright, and time seems to be frozen in shadow: Over everything, stillness. The fact that this album lives in negative space, like the margins on a page or silence between songs, is paradoxical and often disconcerting. It is ballsy and on point, which I appreciate more than enjoy. Untitled unmastered, by contrast, is a record defined by absence and void: there is no structural or tonal center for most of the tracks, nor are there even song titles the music, a mix of live jazz and ambient beats meanders and strays, without consideration for narrative, cohesion, or structure.

Kendrick lamar untitled unmastered rar