I don't get the hype surrounding
Lupe Fiasco. The talk surrounding this guy, aside from
the infamous leak, all I knew was
Jay-Z's praise (so much so that he helped executive produce this, for good or ill) and
that verse off of
Kanye's latest. The usual internet chatter had Lupe stacked as the second coming, and while this guy possesses skills on the mic, it just seemed like empty hype. I joked earlier this year in regards to what this dude invokes in my mind when I hear his music: he is
Pharrell imitating
Kanye. His swagger is total Chi-town, but his sound and aesthetic is that pseudo-"retro Hip-Hop" shit that Pharrell constantly preaches (giving props to
ATCQ and originality while still choosing flavor of the month beats and wearing chunky fucking medallions). That mixture might invoke magic for some, but for me, it's pretty much just the same old song.
My first gripe about this album is the fact that he constantly talks about seeing the bad side of life, and growing up in Chicago, I know
those streets are ROUGH. I just don't get how, when it comes to Hip-Hop, the hardest nigga out right now from the Chi is
Common.
Common? ... but I digress. Taking Lupe's
past musical musings into light, he does know a thing or 3 about "crack rap", although he chooses to shun that to speak about things like skateboarding, his Muslim views, and fatherless homes. His hang up is that, while Jay might say he is a breath of fresh air, that air is long on flash and short on substance.
On tracks like "
He Say, She Say", he literally re-rhymes the first verse on the second, in this tale of a parent and child trying to get Dad to understand what his absence from the home is doing to them. I figured that he'd have this 3rd verse where he let the father speak his piece, but no dice. So instead of us getting to see the whole picture, we are left with a mother who seemingly shouts her disdain for dad so much that her son has picked up on it. His first single (I don't know if you'd call it a hit), "
Kick, Push", is about skaters who try to do things (go on dates, ride around town), and get shut down by the man. End of. I mean, OK they kick, push and then coast, but where's the joy in that? No real time to trick, they just get roadblocked all the way? Is that the message he really wants to bring? "
The Cool" revisists one of my favorite breaks,
James Brown's "
Funky Drummer", to
some success, but the storyline is muddy... apparently, this gangsta who got murked 6 months ago somehow rises from the dead and... walks around. He makes a lot of witty remarks about this dude getting robbed in the same spot he got popped and all this other flash, but the track does not have a moral, aside from the fuzzy "if you chase the cool you gonna get popped" theme, which is not really explored. Like most of his ideas.
The other problem I have with Lupe and a lot of the rappers coming out today is that everyone wants to resurrect Hip-Hop. That's all well and good if you go about it the proper way (boom bap beats, gritty rhymes, etc); you are NOT bring back that "true shit" by making throwaway
Linkin Park-sounding tracks, or throwing Jay-Z on
the most garbage instrumental I have ever heard. You cannot escape the trapping of commercial Rap by catering to that audience. He has the neo-soul, the
Fort Minor, and the pseudo Roc fans on lock, but that real Hip-Hop? It goes about as far as the instrumental to "Kick, Push", which has just the right amount of jazz and soul to it to make it work. "
I Gotcha" is an exception, because that piano sample (
Monk?) that Pharrell and co. hook up is mint.
In the end, Lupe should have proofread some of this ideas. Take "
American Terrorist" for example. The idea behind this track, obviously, is to show how American is just as terroristic as the guys who fly planes into buildings. The thing is, the title would have been better suited to be called just plain old "Terrorist". Throwing the "American" in there not only undermines the educated fans
who know what the fuck a terrorist is, but it also indicates that there is some difference between "American terrorism" and the terrorism from places in the Middle East, for example, when in fact, terrorism is terrorism. On another tip, why do we need a 12 minute shout-
outro? Did they run out of ink for your booklet? Too many missteps, not enough progress.
Look, Lupe suffers from what many others in his boat suffer from: too much seasoning, not enough experience. If this album took him years to make, maybe he should go back and let it marinate. Like
Sam Jackson said in
Juice: "You can't pour syrup and shit and make it pancakes". You can't throw big name supporters and flashy production ontop of underdeveloped ideas and call it revolution. While many may herald Lupe as some second-coming or the next torch-bearer for conscious Hip-Hop, he is just another bitchmade Muslim who used to rap about gat-toting to me. Until he keeps it all the way real, keep it out of my Best Buy bins.
And where the fuck in the world does being
the biggest seller at Best Buy truly mean anything?!
rock the dub gives this album a 5 out of 10: sorry choruses, pointless stories and a tired, non-believable format make this one lazy collection for the true Hip-Hop listener.related links:official Lupe Fiasco websiteLupe Fiasco's MySpace pageLupe Fiasco's Atlantic Records webpageLupeFiasco.net (fansite)Lupe Fiasco's hypebeast blog
Nothing too crazy going on right here... more of a mash-up of things going on in my life, in my head, and in our environment.
