Isaiah Rashad & GoldLink Drop "Untitled"

Released in a similar anonymity to Kendrick‘s Untitled Unmastered, Isaiah Rashad and GoldLink collaborated to release a track with no name, no prior conceit, and no previous advertisement or hinting.

The accompanying artwork stylistically matches the aforementioned Kendrick project, and melancholic bluesy jazz sonics in the background, done artistically by The Antydote, has become somewhat of a trademark of the artists in TDE, with retro jazz influences littering ScHoolboy Q‘s and Kendrick Lamar’s most recents projects. On the other side of the spectrum, GoldLink’s “future bounce” sound combines elements of funk and jazz, with And After That, We Didn’t Talk feeling like a record that very well could’ve been an avant-garde work released in the latter years of the 20th century.

Rashad talks consumerism and expectations of lower income black boys in his verse:

“Mama why you got me rockin’ Sketchers?
I’m a product of the product
And the product bought a Lexus ”

“Get your rest and get your money
Preacher preacher started rappin’ just to reach us”

The niched nostalgia ballads Rashad puts forth have become the mark of his lyricism, separating his lyrics, which very much embody an adolescent minority’s state of mind, from the rest of his crew, and from the rest of artists in his genre. GoldLink reinforces the nostalgia factor with a tale of a past romance with a girl who enthralled herself with gangbangers, and thoughts on the human conditions of love and mortality:

“Heard that she got a man
He a Blood and we ain’t trippin’ ‘cuh
Got some killers that just don’t believe, but they believe in love”