According to legend, the songs on untitled unmastered were part of a collection of songs that were going to make up Kendrick's follow-up to Good Kid, m.A.A.d City. But after going to Africa, he decided to start over and create the songs for To Pimp a Butterfly. An album that is one of the best albums, regardless of genre, of its time.

But I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Kendrick followed through and made an album based on the themes of untitled unmastered instead?

To me, it seems that Kendrick was equating modern days as the End of Days. There were a lot of references to the Apocalypse and some religious imagery.

But even though it's easy to form the idea that now is the End of Days, I think an album based upon that subject could easily become heavy-handed.

It's not fair to read into the themes of three or four songs and project the course and quality of an album that never was.

Like the album title suggests, these songs were closer to demos than fully realized songs. He reworks his final songs so much, even if the fundamentals of these songs were on the album, they likely would have ended up differently on a completed album.

While some of his songs work really well independently, his albums can't really be viewed apart from the whole.

In the end, the album that we saw was brilliant and a true musical event. Something that rarely happens in hip-hop these days.

But it's interesting to think about these things.

<--- Me when my head hits the pillow