Description
In execution, untitled unmastered. is the complete inverse 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. No other rapper has taken up so much real estate in the past 12 months while releasing so little music and sharing as little about themselves as Kendrick. TPAB—a Grammy-winning ride of densely knotted rhymes, tangled ideas, and deep sounds—positioned Kendrick Lamar as a reluctant messiah figure, and its dialogues with self and manifestations of God resisted quick-and-easy unpacking. Now, he’s released a handful-and-a-half of song sketches in a project that’s neither album nor mixtape (or even EP or LP), and seem to have even less a chance of radio play than TPAB did upon its arrival. But it feels like an extension of that album’s world—an asterisk, perhaps, or an extended coda.
