Mar 8, 2016 Reflections 2016-03-04 Billboard Interviews Thundercat Reviews 2016-03-08 Pitchfork News 2016-03-08 Kendrick Lamar's 'Untitled Unmastered' to get CD and vinyl release
Mar 8, 2016 Thundercat on How Kendrick Lamar's New Project 'Completes the Sentence' of 'To p---- a Butterfly' 3/4/2016 by Natalie Weiner Kendrick Lamar dropped a new project called Untitled, Unmastered around midnight ET on Friday (March 4), and as is now more or less custom, it was a complete surprise -- even to some of his closest collaborators. Billboard caught up with Stephen "Thundercat" Bruner, fresh off a Grammy win for his work on Lamar's 2015 album To p---- a Butterfly (along with the awards garnered by the album itself, "These Walls," which featured Bruner, Anna Wise and Bilal, won best rap/sung collaboration), to talk about the unexpected release, which features the prolific bassist and songwriter throughout. How long did you know this was in the works? I didn't realize until recently -- they kind of hid it from everybody. Every now and again, I'll go to the studio -- I feel like Kendrick's always just working. He's always in the process of coming across something. He just kind of puts things out as he feels. I didn't realize until maybe a day before that he was going to put the music out. I walked in the studio -- they had been recording stuff -- and then there was this sidebar about how to release it. I was just like, "Oh s---t." I was kind of shocked. Have you listened to it? Yeah, I listened to it right before it came out. I knew about a couple of the songs that were a little older, but at the same time...it's still surprising every time I hear it. Which ones are you on? I'm on "untitled 02," "untitled 03," "untitled 04," "untitled 05," "untitled 07," and "untitled 08." I wrote "untitled 08." "untitled 07" is the one with that extended stripped-down part, right? I remember that -- there was a lot of silliness that would happen in the studio. It's like, you never know what someone's paying attention to. But I remember when we came up with that. We were just kind of sitting there, kind of spent from having recorded a lot of stuff, and we came across that. Every once in awhile everyone gets a chance to see Kendrick's comedic side -- you can hear it on this record, how he has the ability to be that guy too. I was laughing so hard [which is audible on the track], just because of how far the idea was going...I was sitting there, like "What the h---?" Kendrick calls the album "Demos from To p---- A Butterfly. In raw form. Unfinished. Untitled. Unmastered." Is it safe to say that these are more or less outtakes from the album? That they were recorded in the same sessions? Well, not all of them -- I think he just kind of did what made sense to him, listening to music that was in and around To p---- A Butterfly. ["Untitled 3"] is from a while ago. I remember "Blue Faces" ["untitled 08"] -- that song that was like, mostly me and Mono/Poly -- was more from the beginning of me and him working together. We wrote it at the house and brought it to him. Overall, he mixed it up a bit, that's the best way to describe it. The old, and a bit of the new. It still feels very much like To p---- a Butterfly, but there's still a bit of the newer Kendrick in there too, what's happened since the album. I don't know the full scope of what he did -- there was definitely a lot of music there already, too. I just know that the best thing ever was walking into that one session and realizing that he was going to put out new music -- that just excited me a bit. I know you guys spent so much time together in the studio -- how much more material like this do you think there is? Oh, there's a lot more. That's why I was saying, there was work that was going on in and around it. The songs I remember -- it's all these little reminders of why he is who he is. What song do you like the best? There's one line in the album [on "untitled 5"] that genuinely messes with me, when he said "Why would you want to see a man with a broken heart?" I was just like, wow. I had never heard that song [in its entirety] and then me hearing that for the first time -- it just reminded me of how great Kendrick really is. His ability to convey ideas is like, unmatched. It just hit me really hard. I was like, "Yeah, why would you want to see that?" That's why they call him King Kendrick -- he's pretty amazing. I also feel like this record is maybe even more jazz-ish than TPAB. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody's had a chance to see where his influences lie. There's definitely a big jazz influence on the album -- he'll always be that guy. He wears everything on his sleeve. The jazz influence -- it's too heavy in his music. He'll always be able to use that as a reference. He'll always be able to see that. So you mentioned you've been in the studio with him recently -- making new music? Absolutely, making music. It kind of varies, which I'm really happy about. I play bass, but also do some production. There are different facets to it -- sometimes somebody will think I'm playing bass, and it's a song I wrote, or somebody will think I wrote a song and it's just me playing bass. He has lots of different influences -- with this stuff, he definitely completed the sentence of To p---- a Butterfly. I think that's what happened with this album. It's the complete statement of TPAB. Did you get any sense of what made them want to release it right now? I don't know what made it right now, but it's like, he's always ticking. I think what he showed with this album is that his mind is always on the music.
Mar 8, 2016 Kendrik still working with Thundercat, thats all we need to know dude is one of the best bassists in the game, would have been sad not to see him on his next album
Mar 8, 2016 Kendrick Lamar's 'Untitled Unmastered' to get CD and vinyl release By Gerrick D. Kennedy Kendrick Lamar's "Untitled Unmastered," a collection of album outtakes released by surprise last week, will also be sold in a physical version, according to the rapper's label head. Responding to fan inquires on Twitter, Top Dawg Entertainment head Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith confirmed the collection would be released on CD and pressed to vinyl. No date was given, but it's speculated that the physical copies could hit stores on Friday. A representative for major-label distributor Interscope didn't respond to a request for comment by time of posting. Comprising eight tracks, the near full-length album features outtakes and demos from Lamar's Grammy-winning "To p---- a Butterfly," including untitled songs Lamar has performed on TV as far back as 2014 on "The Colbert Report," "The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon" and, most recently, at the 58th Grammy Awards. The project was released to music services late Thursday night. The arrival of the new material, however, wasn't a complete surprise. Hours before the material's arrival on Thursday, Spotify, either by mistake or as a way of drumming up pre-release hype, uploaded the title, tracklist and album cover art as a placeholder after several days of speculation from Lamar's label bosses at Top Dawg Entertainment. See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour >> After the Grammys, Tiffith mentioned — in a Twitter conversation with LeBron James — that he was genuinely considering James' suggestion of releasing the many untitled Lamar tracks that the rapper had performed on television in recent months. Then two days ago, Tiffith took to Instagram to add, "Ive decided 2 drop a project 1 day this week. I won't say wut day or who. It cud be 2nite So don't ask me jus stay close to the net. Is this Kool with y'all?" "Untitled Unmastered" arrives weeks after Lamar's riveting, emotionally charged performance at the Grammy Awards, where he rapped about police brutality and the shooting of Trayvon Martin in the most politically minded performance of the night— a medley of "Butterfly" tracks "The Blacker the Berry" and "Alright," as well as the latest entry in his "Untitled" series of verses.
Mar 8, 2016 Pitchfork Reviews Kendrick Lamar's untitled unmastered. Top Dawg Entertainment; 2016 By kris ex ; March 8, 2016 "I made To p---- a Butterfly for you," raps Kendrick Lamar on the opening cut from untitled unmastered. It's tempting to read a lot into those words; in fact, it's tempting to delve deeply into everything about his latest release. Because when the promotionally frugal, preeminent thinking-person's rapper of a generation lets forth a largely unexpected collection of demos into a click economy of hot takes and broadcasted enthusiasm, the friction of opposites is enough to spark the kind of hopes that see meaning in everything. No other rapper has taken up so much real estate in the past 12 months while releasing so little music and sharing as little about themselves as Kendrick. TPAB—a Grammy-winning ride of densely knotted rhymes, tangled ideas, and deep sounds—positioned Kendrick Lamar as a reluctant messiah figure, and its dialogues with self and manifestations of God resisted quick-and-easy unpacking. Now, he’s released a handful-and-a-half of song sketches in a project that's neither album nor mixtape (or even EP or LP), and seem to have even less a chance of radio play than TPAB did upon its arrival. But it feels like an extension of that album's world—an asterisk, perhaps, or an extended coda. There's little doubt that just about all of these songs are from TPAB sessions—"untitled 03," subtitled with a date of "05.28.2013," had already been performed four months beforeButterfly's release, during the the long goodbye of "The Colbert Report" with help from Terrace Martin, Thundercat, Bilal, and Sonnymoon's Anna Wise. It's classic Kendrick—a reductive-yet-sprawling fever-chill of observations on race and the music industry that mixes stereotype with history and wisdom. It's insightful and uncomfortable, if not outright offensive: Asians are linked to Eastern philosophy, Native Americans to the land, Blacks to lust, whites to greed. It's also the collection's most fully-formed song; perhaps the only one that emerges as a finished thought here. One of the most enchanting things about this project is hearing how Kendrick manipulates his own voice before the studio modulations kick in. His vocal tics and morphs have long been technologically-aided affairs, but on "untitled 02" he's full of elastic long tails—partially gleeful Lil Wayne, wholly sanctifying choir sinner. He's crying for his bosses—both Top Dawg and God—while lamenting urban addiction and dysfunction, and contemplating mortality. "World is going brazy/ Where did we go wrong?/ It's a tidal wave/ It's a thunderdome," he sing-raps, sounding half-possessed, half-saved. For the second half of the song, he includes the firestarter verse he performed in January on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." But the scorching iteration of that live performance is nowhere here—he's laid-back and matter-of-fact, but his threat just as heavy: "I can put a rapper on life support/ Guarantee that's something none of you want." At times Kendrick is joined by other voices—TDE's Jay Rock and Punch, and Wise (again) on "untitled 05," which sounds like a long jazz-groove session made just to find the best parts; Cee-Lo Green shows up over the bossa nova breeziness of Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammed's "untitled 06"—but, much like TPAB, untitled unmastered. is unmistakably about Kendrick Lamar. The song he's jokingly creating on the back end of "untitled 07" shows up earlier as "untitled 04," and its refrain is "head is the answer/head is the future"—which may or may not be a multiple-entendre about sex, life and spirituality. Because Kendrick is so share-averse, goofy moments like these that would be filler on other projects have the revelatory power of a posthumous recording here. It's the kind of stuff you'd find out from other artists via their social media detritus—at the end of "untitled 02" he asks who's doing drums, sounding like a bona fide jazz cat complimenting Max Roach's stick work—but Kendrick has a verve for taking giant steps backwards into an era where masters let the music speak for itself. It all feels like a jazz project, but not just because he's using jazz music. These numbers are packed with more information and moods than the 35-minute running time suggests. On "untitled 01" he dons his robes as God's servant, talking to the Supreme Being: "[You] told me to use my vocals to save mankind for you/ [Don't] say I didn't try for you, say I didn't ride for you, or tithe for you, or push the club to the side for you." (If the song's subtitles are indeed dates of conception, this one—"8.19.2014."—suggests that Kendrick was having conversations with God about the course of his album a full seven months before TPAB actually arrived.) In execution, untitled unmastered. is a complete inversion of Kanye West's recent The Life of Pablo—it's a small and quiet statement from an artist with little to prove at this moment. Its author tempts deeper reading, but his choices and the lack of entry points—no directional song titles, no grand proclamations, no promotion—leaving nothing to deal with but the music. As with TPAB, untitled unmastered. demands to be approached on its own terms, even when you don't know what those terms are. You can't say he didn't try for you, ride for you, or push the club to the side for you.
