I often say that Kendrick Lamar and Kanye are the only two "mainstream" artists in Hip Hop (as in guys who is actually selling records) that are really doing something new and exciting, creating something that might very well be remembered and held in high esteem 20 years from now. Kendrick's "Good Kidd, M.A.A.D. City" was absolutely brilliant, but it was "To Pimp a Butterfly" that really made me realize that he is one of the leadig voices of our generation. Every single verse was so well written and delivered with a lot of heart, the beats was masterfully crafted and added on exceptionally by the great LA jazz artists of the day like Robert Glasper, Thundercat, Terrance Martin and Kamasi Washington. And it all had a strong message, but Kendrick was clever enough to hide his politics well enough to fool the media machine, securing air time and big label promotion. But enough of "To Pimp A Butterfly" (let me add that it was also the best album released in 2015 before we move on).
Since then Lamar has promoted the album at shows large arenas, and in small TV studio settings like those on The Colbert Report and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Beisdes the intense material from the album a lot of these concerts containted one or two unreleased bangers that fans quickly took to the internet to beg for proper studio versions of these powerful jams. Even NBA star Lebron James tweeted to Top Dawg Entertainment CEO pleading for the tracks to be released just a week or two ago. Sometimes prayers, hundreds of Twitter fans and an NBA star can make shit happen because just yetserday Kendrick, out of nowehere, dropped a free EP containing the tracks from those performances as well as some other goodies for us all to enjoy. It's not "Butterfly" but I'll gladly take it. Featuring 8 songs all of them are untitled and are only labeled by the date they were either conceived or completed and the title of the project is "Untitled / Unmastered" which speaks for itself.
However the meaning might be a bit deeper as TDE's CEO Punch says that Kendrick was inspired by Prince and his "Black Abum" when putting the record together - "as far as untitled me and Kendrick always talked about doing a sort of "Black Album", like how Prince did back in the day. There was no album cover, no song titles, no anything - just tracks he threw out [...] To me it just means freedom" (Source: Billboard). You can stream the full mini alubm at Spotify below (which I'm not a big fan of) or you can head over to iTunes and purchase a high quality copy for your listening plesaure.over at iTunes whhere it's availabe now.
01. untitled 01.08.19.2014 [prod. by Hit-Boy & DJ Spinz]
02. untitled 02.06.23.2014 [prod. by Yung Exclusive & Cardiak]
03. untitled 03.05.28.2014 (Ft. Thundercat, Bilal, Terrace Martin & Anna Wise [prod. by Da Internz]
04. untitled 04.08.14.2014 (Ft. Jay Rock & SZA) [prod. by Bizzness Boi & Nard&B)
05. untitled 05.09.21.2014 (Ft. Anna Wise, Punch & Jay Rock) [prod. by Nard&B)
06. untitled.06.06.30.2014 (Ft. Cee-Lo) [prod. by Ali Shaheed Muhammad & Adrian Younge] (!!!)
07. untitled 07 2014-2016 [prod. by Frank Dukes, Caro, Yung Exclusive, Swizz Beats & Egypt Dean)
08. untitled 08 09.06.2014 [prod. by DJ Khalil]
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