It billows and seethes, with dissonant horn-runs flickering across even its smoother surfacesĪ wealthy insight into the mind and working of an artist who is quite rightly considered a genius, just without any of the added self-hype or media hysteria The dense, jazzy production, though beautifully played and often-indeed-sweet and sunny, is also sonically unresolved. It is an intriguing companion piece to one of the most significant albums of recent yearsĪnother eight tracks in a similar vein to those on his 2015 album Even in this concentrated, pared-down form, the music of Kendrick Lamar doesn’t cease to amaze Kendrick Lamar can still command attention like no other. To call ‘untitled unmastered.’ a follow-up would be unfair, but what it reveals is that rap’s most innovative has a lot more left in his locker The result may be a different kind of journey, complete with detours and dead-ends, but it's as compelling as any he's taken so far. Shows a more casual but just as powerful brillianceĪs vital as anything else its maker has released His words meaningful and his flow on point as always, the tracks sketchy yet innovative, he raises the bar once again is everything reverse of Kanye West's recent The Life of Pablo-it's a small and quiet statement from an artist with little to prove at this moment He continues to hold our attention as he makes sense of his own findings on God and race and legacy and perfectionĮven Lamar’s off-cuts are meatier than anything many of his peers could even hope to produce at their peak Instead of shying away from the long shadow of To Pimp a Butterfly, untitled unmastered happily embraces that shared DNA, reveling in the subtleties that set it apart It’s both ambient yet thrashing, melodic yet radiating

Untitled’s 34 minutes are so crammed with ideas that they almost need to be read like poetry, with annotations, to be fully appreciated Is this the direction we want to see artists going, revealing their vault works to please a feverish fanbase? With a Renaissance man like Kendrick Lamar, the answer is yes, with anyone else, the conclusion is still up in the airĪ bonus disc that improbably holds up as an essential album in its own right

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