On his fourth studio album, DAMN., the rapper delivered the highest-charting song of his career, the rapid-fire “Humble.” Alongside hit singles “Element,” “DNA” and the Rihanna collaboration “Loyalty,” Lamar converges old school rap with fast bars and abrupt cuts and jumps from one verse to the next. Continuing the themes introduced in To Pimp a Butterfly, the project expands on Lamar’s social commentary on American life and politics, opening with the pointedly unsettling track “Untitled 01.” During the intensive creation process, Lamar said he probably scrapped “two to three albums worth of material.”Īrriving just short of a year after the release of To Pimp a Butterfly, untitled unmastered is a compilation album of unreleased demos from the preceding record. The result is a conscious rap album that celebrates past Black music traditions and blends spoken world, soul and contemporary rap. In between dropping good kid, m.A.A.d city and 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar went on a trip to South Africa, where he visited charged historical sites, including Nelson Mandela’s jail cell. Dre, Jay-Z and more, the project introduced the rapper to a mainstream audience and would go on to earn him four GRAMMY nominations at the 2014 Awards, including Album of the Year.
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Touching on heavy themes like racism and the crack epidemic of the 1980s, it has been referred to as a concept album in which the rapper sought to address systemic problems and his own experience of growing up in the Compton neighborhood of California.įollowing the independently released Section.80, 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city marked Lamar’s major-label debut. While recording Section.80, he said that he wanted the album to be “as organic as possible” and often left songs unfinished, only to return to them later. Lamar began working on his debut album around January 2011, releasing the project in July. Ahead of Lamar’s latest musical release, HYPEBEAST looks back on a decade of the rapper’s discography and the evolution of his sound. From launching his career under the name K-Dot to producing the entire Black Panther soundtrack, Lamar has cemented himself as one of rap’s most accomplished artists, with five critically-acclaimed studio albums – as well as a handful of fan-favorite mixtapes – to back it up.