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Kendrick Lamar · S6 E1
untitled unmastered.
Leftover recordings from Butterfly, released without warning. Raw, unfinished, and brilliant
March 4, 2016. Without warning, eight untitled tracks from the TPAB sessions appear on every streaming platform, and nobody at TDE has said a word about it.
Kendrick Lamar, God Is Gangsta (short film, 2015). A TPAB visual that captures the album's spiritual war between temptation and faith. This is the world the untitled sessions were born from: dark, jazz-soaked, and restless with questions that Kendrick couldn't finish answering in sixteen tracks.
God Is Gangsta, Kendrick Lamar (2015)
Part of a series of TPAB short films, this track blends elements from 'u' and 'For Sale?' into a visual narrative about Kendrick's battle with Lucy (Lucifer). The production is claustrophobic jazz, all minor keys and unsettled rhythms. Listen for the way Kendrick's voice shifts between characters without warning, one moment pleading, the next seducing. The short film format is exactly what untitled unmastered. captures in audio: unfinished ideas too powerful to throw away.
Sources
Kendrick Lamar. "To Pimp a Butterfly." Top Dawg Entertainment / Aftermath / Interscope, 2015.
“Those songs didn't make the album, but they still mean something. I wanted people to hear where my head was at during that time.”
— Kendrick Lamar on releasing untitled unmastered., interview, 2016
The Demand
The untitled tracks existed because Kendrick couldn't stop recording during the TPAB sessions. For every song that made the album, there were others that didn't. When he performed two of them on national television, first on The Tonight Show, then on other late-night shows, the reaction was immediate: fans wanted the full recordings. TDE obliged with zero fanfare.
Sources
Billboard, "Kendrick Lamar's 'untitled unmastered.' Debuts at No. 1," March 2016
TAP TO REVEAL: What do the dates in each track title mean?
What sparked the release of untitled unmastered.?
untitled 05 | 09.21.2014., Kendrick Lamar (2016)
One of the darker recordings from the sessions. The production is heavier and more chaotic than most of TPAB proper. Kendrick raps with an urgency that feels unedited and unrehearsed, like catching a thought before it's been shaped into a verse. This is the sound of an artist processing something in real time, without the safety net of a finished album.
untitled 05 | 09.21.2014., Kendrick Lamar (2016)
Read the lyrics while you listen. The rawness shows in the structure: thoughts overlap, verses shift direction mid-line, and some bars feel like they were written on the spot. This is what TPAB sounded like before Kendrick decided what to keep and what to cut.
untitled unmastered.
untitled unmastered. was the exhale. Now comes the inhale: a blind woman on a street corner, a gunshot, and a question that will frame the next fourteen tracks. Next: BLOOD.
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