For the past couple years, whenever Kendrick Lamar has performed on national television, he has dropped a new, previously unheard track. All called simply “Untitled,” the new songs premiered on The Colbert Report in December 2014, The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon in January 2016, and the Grammys just last month. At the time, it wasn't clear whether studio versions of the tracks would ever surface. But tonight, Kendrick gave his fans a surprise gift, dropping those three tracks plus five others in a new EP called untitled unmastered.

The collection is very much of a piece with To Pimp a Butterfly, and was mostly recorded during the same sessions — each untitled track is labeled with a date, from May 2013 through September 2014 — except for “untitled 07,” a multipart, eight-minute epic that K-Dot apparently began in 2014 and only finished this year. As usual, the rapper is in top form, over jazzy backdrops and accompanied by the occasional guest, including Jay Rock and Cee Lo Green.

You can hear the whole thing via Spotify below. It's almost unfair that Kendrick's castoffs are better than most people's finished albums.


The 20 Best Hip-Hop Songs in History
Filming Straight Outta Compton Got a Lot More Real Than Anyone Intended
Top 10 Sexiest Hip-Hop Video Vixens

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.