TDN 10-Year Anniversary Series: Kendrick Lamar - untitled unmastered.
“PIMP PIMP, HURRAY! PIMP PIMP HURRAY!”
Kendrick Lamar’s most raw work to date. This album is the avant-garde of rap. With features and contributions from Cardo Got Wings, Terrace Martin, Bilal, SZA, Ceelo Green, TDE Punch, Thundercat, Lance Skiiiwater, Anna Wise, Jay Rock and more makes this a monumental project that transcends rap as not just a music genre, but back to its nature as being a mouthpiece for the controversies in our culture. Kendrick asserts his frustrations on wax. It covers the varying nature of sexual desire, the inevitable anger that every black man faces in America, warning against our own self-destructive nature, and religion as a tool for our salvation versus for our oppression.
Quiet as kept, this is the album that I feel cemented Kendrick’s place as one of the greats. Not because of any commercial success, but if we were to strip this album and test it by the standards of what makes a real rap album - this is it. It has literally everything that every great rap should want. Original cadence, callback to cultural roots, dissection of fame, giving adherence to his musical impact. Kendrick is a modern griot - telling the ugly truth of the man’s plight that is still taboo. Let’s give a breakdown of the album.
untitled 01 | 08.19.2014. - “I made “To Pimp a Butterfly” for you. Told me to use my vocals to save mankind for you,”
As personifying himself as a doomsayer, Kendrick uses the intro track to start the soundtrack of the revolution. This New York style production personifies the grittiness. He spares no one’s ears from the evils that are already in our society and the ones that are imminent to come if we do not
untitled 02 | 06.23.2014. - “Get God on the phone! Get Top on the phone,”
Kendrick wants to talk to a higher power about the from jiggaboos to substance abuse to gang culture to materialistic wealth that has been set upon us to seek out the culture’s demise.
untitled 03 | 05.28.2013 - “What did the black man say?,”
A modern funk track that explores the vices of the Asian, Indian, Black, White man. Vices that will ultimately be the tragic flaw that leads to their demise if they do not look within for their own freedom.
My personal favorite - “Head is the answer,”
A stripped mantra abstracting the inequalities of our quest for spiritual truth and refuge in America that we cannot control. The quest for our own pleasure in the midst of this chaos is the only thing that we can control.
untitled 05 | 09.21.2014.- The first verse is my favorite K.Dot verse on this project - This track touches on not letting your own vices of inner anger be the tool of your own demise - even if revenge is warranted. Letting the anger consume your body until your soul becomes lost and the struggle to overcome that anger to reach your own salvation.
untitled 06 | 06.30.2014. - “Am I mortal man or make-believe?,”
An ode to the feminine. This is an admiration that transcends romantic-sexual love or motherly love, this is a reverence of the spiritual power of the woman. Kendrick has always shown his love for women and the importance of using his music to uplift women through his music. But it’s not idolization - it's acknowledging the everyday presence of women that make the culture.
untitled 07 | 2014-2016 “Love won’t get you high like this. Drugs won’t get you high like this,”
This song is sonically paradoxical - sounds like you would hear it at a party but he’s using it as a way to program for you to look beyond the distractions and to look within to “levitate”.
Part 2 - “Before you stick out your chest, loosen your bra,”
I love me some Kendrick bravado. Never backing down from a confrontation and to anyone who needs that.
Untitled 08 | 09.06.2014 - “Get that new money, and it's breaking me down, honey,”
Another ode to funk (you can tell that this genre was instrumental in his upbringing), Kendrick personifies that money cannot fix everything. Our culture’s greed for money transcends financial satisfaction - money is used as a faulty tool for our own insatiable gratification. We need money to want more money.
Kendrick has always been an instrumental voice for the culture and the complex nature with it. “untitled, unmastered.” is his personal music diary that assesses the weight of the black man’s world.
Take this whole month to listen and dissect each track for its complex layering, from the musical composition to the entendres that he slips in to make the mind wonder.