I know you guys spent so much time together in the studio - how much more material like this do you think there is? I just know that the best thing ever was walking into that one session and realizing that he was going to put out new music - that just excited me a bit. I don’t know the full scope of what he did - there was definitely a lot of music there already, too. It still feels very much like To Pimp a Butterfly, but there’s still a bit of the newer Kendrick in there too, what’s happened since the album. Overall, he mixed it up a bit, that’s the best way to describe it. We wrote it at the house and brought it to him. I remember “Blue Faces” - that song that was like, mostly me and Mono/Poly - was more from the beginning of me and him working together. Well, not all of them - I think he just kind of did what made sense to him, listening to music that was in and around To Pimp A Butterfly. Unmastered.” Is it safe to say that these are more or less outtakes from the album? That they were recorded in the same sessions? Kendrick calls the album “Demos from To Pimp A Butterfly. I was laughing so hard, just because of how far the idea was going…I was sitting there, like “What the hell?” Every once in awhile everyone gets a chance to see Kendrick’s comedic side - you can hear it on this record, how he has the ability to be that guy too. We were just kind of sitting there, kind of spent from having recorded a lot of stuff, and we came across that. But I remember when we came up with that. It’s like, you never know what someone’s paying attention to. I remember that - there was a lot of silliness that would happen in the studio. “untitled 07” is the one with that extended stripped-down part, right? I’m on “untitled 02,” “untitled 03,” “untitled 04,” “untitled 05,” “untitled 07,” and “untitled 08.” I wrote “untitled 08.”

I knew about a couple of the songs that were a little older, but at the same time…it’s still surprising every time I hear it. Yeah, I listened to it right before it came out. I was just like, “Oh shoot.” I was kind of shocked. I walked in the studio - they had been recording stuff - and then there was this sidebar about how to release it. I didn’t realize until maybe a day before that he was going to put the music out. He just kind of puts things out as he feels.

He’s always in the process of coming across something. Every now and again, I’ll go to the studio - I feel like Kendrick’s always just working. I didn’t realize until recently - they kind of hid it from everybody. How long did you know this was in the works?

Kendrick lamar untitled unmastered 07