To understand the audio quality, one must understand the context. In late 2015, following the Grammy success of To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Instead of playing a hit single, he debuted a frantic, untitled jazz-fusion piece known only as "Untitled 3." Fans were mesmerized. The track wasn't on TPAB. It wasn't on good kid, m.A.A.d city. It existed in a spectral limbo.
For months, fans dubbed these performances "the untitled tracks." When Untitled Unmastered finally dropped via Top Dawg Entertainment, Aftermath, and Interscope, it felt less like a studio album and more like an archaeological discovery. The tracklist is simply "Untitled 01" through "Untitled 08," followed by dates (e.g., "08.19.2015").
These were sessions recorded during the TPAB era—some dating as far back as 2013. They feature the same core ensemble: Thundercat on bass, Robert Glasper on keys, Terrace Martin on synths, and the soulful choral interjections of the West Coast Get Down collective. But unlike the polished narrative arc of TPAB, Untitled Unmastered is jagged, confrontational, and raw. Kendrick Lamar Untitled Unmastered 2016 FLAC CD
Why specifically target the 2016 FLAC CD version? Isn't streaming the same thing? Absolutely not. Here is the breakdown of how you lose sound when you don't use lossless files.
Given the rise of vinyl resurgence, you might wonder why the CD/FLAC path is superior for this specific album. To understand the audio quality, one must understand
How to source the legitimate FLAC rip:
If the file size for an 8-track album is less than 250MB, it is not FLAC. A genuine CD rip is approximately 350–450MB for the entire album. How to source the legitimate FLAC rip:
It was March 2016. Kendrick had just dropped To Pimp a Butterfly, a dense, jazz-infused masterpiece that redefined rap. But fans were hungry for the "loose threads"—the tracks performed on The Colbert Report and The Tonight Show that never made the album.
When untitled unmastered. dropped unexpectedly, it felt like a gift from the gods. But the release was chaotic. Streaming services pushed it first. Digital retailers followed. The mastering was… unique. As the title suggested, these were raw demos, finished tracks stripped of their final gloss.
Elias knew that with a project this raw—where the bass hits like a sledgehammer and the horn sections screech with live energy—a standard MP3 would sound like mud. He needed the FLAC.