Mastering Kendrick Lamar’s ’HUMBLE’ with Mike Bozzi

Full video available exclusively on A sneak peek of Mike Bozzi’s ’Mastering Workshop’ series in which he explains the techniques he used to master Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-winning song, ’HUMBLE’. Hosted at Bernie Grundman Mastering, engineer Mike Bozzi introduces you to the specialized facility and its equipment, then gives a synopsis of his professional background, musical influences and mentor Brian Gardener. He discusses the achievement of tasteful loudness in modern mastering, common issues with mixes received, submission advice, mastering single tracks versus albums, sample rate, bit depth, working in dual mono, his monitoring setup, outboard gear and signal path. He proceeds to master three tracks in the style of hip-hop, trap and R&B by artists Kendrick Lamar and SZA. In each case, he critiques the mix, matches overall loudness for comparison and proceeds to master while A-B’ing with the unmastered version. He divulges on precise EQ alterations, de-essing, soft saturation and limiting considerations, and explains why he uses little or no compression or stereo widening. He also comments on streaming platform algorithms and mastering for various formats.