Satie Listens to 2016

[Satie]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Untitled Unmastered. by Kendrick Lamar

Genre: Hip Hop
Sounds Like: UNRIVALED MASTERPIECE, INCREDIBLY TIMELY, VOICE OF A GENERATION, LARGER THAN LIFE, LATE NIGHT TELEVISION WATCHED WEEKS AFTER THE FACT BY MILLENNIALS ON YOUTUBE
First Listen: March 9, 2016
Current Rating: 5/10
Yearly Ranking: N/A

March 16, 2016
I listened to this once a week ago and didn't really have anything to say about it, but I feel like I should put an entry on here for it after listening to it again tonight so that I have something in this space. I've been really taken with working through some of my classical backlog lately, and so I haven't focused much on 2016 releases, and this month has felt a bit slow maybe for that reason. Anyway, enough about my personal listening habits and onto this.

So, Kendrick Lamar's untitled unmastered. is the outtakes album from the TPOB sessions that collects a bunch of untitled tracks, as the name would imply. As far as I know, some of these already came out on various late night shows. I followed those for a bit but haven't really listened to any of them in awhile and didn't care to go and compare to this. If you're reading this, you probably already know the answer to this question anyway. You've also probably heard TPOB, but in case you haven't, it's *press release voice* the singular visionary album that has defined our epoch, a complex meditation on race that happens to be VERY BLACK (TM) and is a return to form for [hip hop/western art/jazz music] and has created some of the largest cultural revolutions of our time, like giving protesters a catchy line in a song to recite ("Alright") or gifting white people with another jazz musician to feature on websites that aren't NPR Music so we can feel *in touch* for another year in Kamasi Washington.

Okay, sorry, sorry, I hear you already groaning from here. Needless to say, I'm not entirely convinced by the Lamar phenomenon. I don't see myself as the target audience of this music or the final authority of its cultural worth, and even though I find the music incredibly middle-of-the-road and mediocre, I'm only really turned off by how it's been sort of cynically manipulated into an object of very public privilege checking thinkpieces instead of... discussions... of the... mus- okay, okay. Yeah, my bad.

I'll come right out and say that untitled unmastered. is not my kind of hip hop at all. The production is incredibly uninteresting, with these "atmospheric" beats that really are just sort of meandering and samey with the occasional interesting timbre (I've always had a weak spot for Lamar's Payback call and responses with the chorus line). The real thing on display here is an undeniably technically skilled (masterful, really) rapper. But I am not at all taken with Kendrick's voice or his flow. The music just sort of rolls over me. Like it seems to me that a big part of the interest of jazz and jazz rap is the more conscious interplay between the rapper and the beat (or in the former case, the different instrumental voices playing off of each other) and this just... isn't that. 5/10

Return to Index