Kendrick is back, unmastered

Brian Maurer, Staff Writer

A year after Kendrick Lamar’s release of his Grammy award-winning album “To Pimp a Butterfly,” he’s back at it again with his new album “Untitled Unmastered.”

Kendrick coverThis album is different from your traditional album. In this case, the album has no track listing, had no promotion, and the tracks on this album were not mastered for iTunes.

Since the release of his album, fans all over the world have been going crazy for Kendrick’s new project. The blogs can’t get enough of it, and neither can critics and fans.

It all started on March 1 when the owner of the independent label “Top Dawg Entertainment” (home to Kendrick Lamar) posted on Twitter about releasing a new album later in the week. Many blogs and fans quickly took action and tried to predict whose album was going to be released. Two days later, the link to the new album was released on Kendrick Lamar’s Twitter page.

Lo and behold, that same night, the album jumped to number 1 on the iTunes chart.

The album consists of demos that did not make the cut for Kendrick Lamar’s album “To Pimp a Butterfly” and most of the songs were performed on “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon,” “The Colbert Report” and this years Grammys.

When performing these tracks they were named “Untitled” and it wasn’t until NBA basketball star LeBron James convinced Kendrick to release the tracks.

All eight tracks on the album are untitled and have the exact date when the songs were recorded. Each track has a different style, and is setup in a way so everyone can have his or her own interpretation.

Recently, the album has been released on vinyl and CD as well. By March 10, the album sold 178,000 copies because of streaming, and 142,000 were in pure album sales.

I enjoyed the album very much because of its lyrical content and storytelling. Since Kendrick’s first official album “Section 80” he’s always been about telling a story in his music. He really knows how to paint a picture with the words he uses. A lot of the songs on this album make you think, and it allows you to paint your own image of the song as well.

What impresses me is that the album still managed to hit No.1 on the Billboard and iTunes chart, with no track listing, no promotion, and completely unmastered.

I really do recommend this album to any Kendrick fan or for anyone who loves music.