kendrick lamar untitled unmastered untitled 2

To Pimp a Butterfly depicted him as a failed messiah, beaten down by a swarm of enemies, the greatest of which was his own imperfection. good kid, m.A.A.d.city presented him as a neutral observer who was slowly sucked into a life of vice and crime and gangs, rescued at the last minute by Jesus and Top Dawg.

Section.80 presented Kendrick as a product of the Reagan era, a rebel railing against a world designed to exterminate him. This isn’t just a collection of b-sides: this is Kendrick’s What If version of his own mythology, flaws as alternate histories, unrealized retcons.Įach of Kendrick’s previous albums has played out like the relaunch of a cape comic. But that’s precisely this album’s beauty: 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. Each song is time-stamped and untitled, stillborn inside the To Pimp a Butterfly session in which it was conceived. In the wrong hands, this line would have been self-insulating, insurance against some future transgression, but in Kendrick’s hands the line is a sincere invitation to take the blemishes seriously, to look onto a disfigured face and see the defects and not the dimples.įeaturing many of the same collaborators, themes and sonic templates as To Pimp A Butterfly, untitled unmastered necessarily lives in that album’s shadow. “Look at my flaws, look at my flaws,” Kendrick Lamar pleads on “untitled 06,” wooing a lover by highlighting his imperfections.

Kendrick lamar untitled unmastered untitled 2