Kendrick’s experimental hankering is constantly in flux. The free jazz ambience is amplified throughout, but not solely in the instrumentals. And yet, for all of its discordance, there is both the degree of palpable cohesion belying To Pimp A Butterfly and the unorthodox narrative of GKMC that lures the listener close. However, most likely owing to its status as an 'unmastered' release, this album is bereft of the same fastidious sonic rendezvous as we are used to hearing. The longer one peers at the portrait of the artist as a young man, the more facets reveal themselves in ingenious, kaleidoscopic fashion. Kendrick’s thoroughly nuanced poetics are such a steep departure from the norm that it's impossible to claim complete assimilation without exhaustive listening sessions, but even then the significance becomes even more indiscriminate. We even inspect the curvature of the numbers in a track titled 'untitled 03- ' in hopes of unlocking Mayan-style codes. We ponder whether or buried beneath Kendrick’s dreadlocks are prosperous musings about climate change, Donald Trump, ISIS, and Super PAC funding. We rummage in the airspace between his lyrical escapades so as not to miss camouflaged philosophies. city, and To Pimp A Butterfly is scrutinised devoutly.

We ask a lot of our musical heroes, and the same artist who exhaled entire tomes of humanity set to drums like Section.80, good kid, m.A.A.d. The Compton native’s appeal can be spliced in illimitable categories, but the conclusion is always his art's untamed, almost psychotic brilliance. Kendrick’s roguish decision to release untitled, unmastered the outtakes of his venerated To Pimp A Butterfly arrived in the form of a tweet, consequently altering more than a few weekend plans, and setting social media circuitry ablaze. The California wordsmith is unprecedented, and his meteoric rise over the last few years has brought about an utter metamorphosis for the hip hop genre. It didn’t take the California State Senate to honour Kendrick Lamar as a cultural icon for the world to take notice.

Untitled unmastered review