Marts' bedste rapudgivelser

Kendrick Lamar, untitled unmastered (Top Dawg / Aftermath / Interscope)

O.D., Kendrick Lamar’s frenetic breakout mixtape from 2010, doesn’t come to a climax so much as it fades out. On “Heaven & Hell,” Tommy Black’s breezy flip of Bobby Lyle’s “Believe” swallows the Compton rapper’s vocals just as things are starting to look up after an abstract string of demons: “Unemployment, racism/ Burning buildings, AIDS victims, cancer killing, no cure.” untitled unmastered, his latest offering--which was either precipitated by a LeBron James tweet or pulled LeBron James into its promotional cycle, either of which is a pretty good story--picks up after the five-year interlude between O.D. and now.

When Kendrick’s voice fades in, you scramble to catch up. To Pimp a Butterfly, his already-bronzed sophomore blockbuster from last March, was in spots tangled and overwrought, but generally dealt in pointed messages and concrete social criticism. But untitled is an exercise in form; Kendrick plays with cadence, with his inflection, darting in and out of each beat’s pocket on a whim. Sometimes (tracks 2, 5, and 7, especially) the effect is hypnotic. Butterfly gestured at jazz, but untitled embodies it. (And employs it: Thundercat is once again a major creative force, playing on six of eight songs.)

The happy irony is that this stylistic breakthrough leads to Kendrick’s best writing since good kid, m.A.A.d. city. But it’s more reminiscent of O.D.’s scattered, fractured style: “I’m sick and tired of being tired/ Can’t pick a side, the Gemini/ Prophesize if we live or not/ Promise mama not to feel no lie.” That circles a thesis, or at least a theme, but where his commercial releases demand clarity and capital-p purpose, here he lets the song unfurl naturally, and the finished version is better for it.

Of course, there’s something disingenuous about a project that goes to great lengths to draw attention to how off-the-cuff it is. The presentation makes untitled feel more staid than it otherwise would, and the dates affixed to each song read as calculated, and even defensive. Fortunately, the music is often so good as to render those complaints irrelevant; “untitled 02 | 06.23.2014.” and “untitled 07 | 2014-2016” both count among the best things he’s done since signing to Aftermath.

Young Thug, Slime Season 3 (300 / Atlantic)

Some of the songs on Slime Season 3 are as much as two years old, but they still sound like they’re from some distant future where Jolly Ranchers and Apple Watches are the only currency. Where the first installment of Young Thug’s preposterously good mixtape serious was a patchwork collection of leaked tracks--and where the second was a breathless vocal exercise--the third might as well be one of those old white-label samplers for radio DJs. With the exception of the long-awaited “Free Offset” (retitled here as “Problem”), it’s not hard to imagine Lyor Cohen holding onto these tracks just in case more recent studio sessions didn’t yield bigger singles for Thug’s retail debut; the fact that they see release here is likely a good sign for the Atlanta savant’s commercial prospects.

SS3 doesn’t have much in the way of thematic or emotional arcs--what the tracks have in common is that they’re sticky and, as has been the rule with Thug since 2013, vocally inventive at nearly every turn. The hook on “Digits” threatens to careen off course at any second; “Slime Shit” puts an every-bar “Hey!” ad-lib front-and-center in the mix. London on da Track, who has been Thug’s most reliable collaborator, handles half of the material here, though the most memorable beat comes courtesy of Mike WiLL Made It on “With Them.”