Album Review: Kendrick Lamar’s “Untitled Unmastered.”

Grammy Award winning artist Kendrick Lamar, released his first compilation album titled “Untitled Unmastered.”, on March 4, 2016. This album is very different than any of Lamar’s previous albums. Ironically it is an album, that consist of 8 songs, that does not have a title or the necessary masters to be produced and sold to the public, hence the album’s title “Untitled Unmastered.”. Lamar has had an enormous amount of success, following his debut album, “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City”, in 2012, and ever since he has left the streets of Compton, California, Lamar has strived to make the city proud. He has worked and remastered songs with a number of award winning artist such as Drake, Kanye West, Janet Jackson, Big Sean, Lil Wayne, and even Lady GaGa. Since the publishing of untitled and unmastered has never seemed to be done in the music industry. Lamar’s album has caused a great amount of controversy, an effect that seems to be very well known to his name. His lyrics and stage performances have always seemed to spark media controversy. The most well-known song lyrics, came from the song titled “Control” with fellow rapper Big Sean released in 2013. Lamar’s song lyrics featured some of the most well-known rappers in the music industry, where he states the love he has for them, but claims that he will be better than all of them. Since the release of the song, most of K-Dot’s more dramatic buzz comes from the performances he gives. Choosing to preform select songs, in select locations that all seem to contain a deeper meaning, during the right time period of time that you usually do not realize until the end of each performance. The opening of the 2015 BET Awards was undeniably a success in the mission of presenting awareness to police brutality. It’s not a secret to anyone of all of the horrible events that led to multiple deaths because of physical abuse of the authorities, and Lamar could not let the year go by without expressing artistically how he felt. In this year’s Grammy awards, Lamar chose to preform politically charged renditions of “The Blacker the Berry” and “Alright,” from his third studio album “To Pimp a Butterfly”. Lamar wore chains, and dressed in prison attire alongside dancers and then hosted an on-stage bonfire. The support he received from the Grammy performance alone was nothing but positive as fans and fellow artist began to congratulate Lamar. Not only did it remind the world of how far we came from the time period of slavery existing, but it also showed the world how far we need to go. It truly shows how powerful Lamar is as an artist. The complication album is has a strong religious base to the songs as well as a dark yet powerful sensual feeling. It is truly a bunch of demo songs that Lamar never released, each song title features a date, which is assumed to be the last day the song was worked on. If you are to ask me, if a person’s demo songs can have such a powerful meaning to them, imagine what happens when he actually produces his songs. The album is available on ITunes, Apple Music, Spotify as well as other downloadable music websites.