Posted by Kendrick Lamar apparently has a ton of music sitting in the vault. On the latest episode of Kevin Durant’s The ETCs podcast, K. Dot’s longtime engineer MixedByAli stopped by and revealed he’s got several albums worth of unreleased material from their sessions over the years.
“For Kendrick alone, let me say I think we could put together like six albums,” he said. “Everyone’s the same way. It’s all about just understanding that you could always do something better. It’s having that mindset to just strive for the best possible version of you.
“That’s Kendrick’s whole mind state, always striving to do better. Whether it’s recording a new verse — you know, he would record a whole song and get one ad-lib back a month later because he don’t like how he breathed the ad-lib, you know?”
According to a post from TDE president Terrence “Punch” Henderson in October, a new Kendrick album will finally see the light of day soon, as fans have been waiting anxiously for a follow-up to his last effort, 2017’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN.
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When a fan asked him on Twitter when to expect the album, Punch replied “pretty soon” and clarified he meant “as in soon soon” when another fan asked whether it’d be this year.
Bassist and frequent Kendrick collaborator Thundercat also seemingly confirmed the project was on its way back in March, when he told Japanese fashion brand Neet Tokyo in an interview he’d worked on an album for the TDE golden child.
“I think I worked on the new one a little bit,” he said. “But not as much.”
Kendrick recently appeared on Busta Rhymes’ latest album Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God on the track “Look Over Your Shoulder.”
Listen to Durant and Ali’s full conversation below.