Lupe's Fiasco

This is the story of two albums – or three, or four. It’s hard to keep track. Back in 2008, hip-hop moralist Lupe Fiasco, the stage name for Chicago-born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, announced that his third and final studio album would be entitled LupE.N.D., and was set to release sometime in the next year. Rumors circulated that LupE.N.D. would be a three-disc super-record. However, Lupe quickly scrubbed those rumors and stated that the record was going to be withheld indefinitely. Confused fans clamored to know what Lupe’s next project would be, and Lupe announced a string of three albums, one titled The Great American Rap Album, before LupE.N.D. would ever see the light of day. Three years later, none of these albums have been made. Instead, we are left with Lasers (Atlantic), an album that knowingly lacks the signature, “Lupe Fiasco’s,” as found in the titles of his two previous albums, Food & Liquor and The Cool – likely because Lasers is not a true Lupe Fiasco record. At least, not completely.

On 2006’s Food & Liquor and 2007’s The Cool (Atlantic), Lupe Fiasco established himself as a revolutionary figure in the realm of hip-hop – a sort of lyrical devil’s advocate bent on exposing the cracks and faults in rap culture. Lupe’s own flow stood at odds with the popular excesses of hip-hop, while embracing the medium’s irresistible hooks and ability to convey truths with style and grace. In Food & Liquor’s “Hurt Me Soul,” Lupe sketches his introduction to hip-hop: “Now I’m not trying to be the greatest / I used to hate hip-hop / yep, because the women degraded / But Too $hort made me laugh, / like a hypocrite I played it. / A hypocrite I stated, though I only recited half.” Both albums included loose concepts – Food & Liquor representing the division between good and evil, and The Cool expanding on characters found on the first record – which artfully allowed Lupe to weave in and out of topics ranging from the hood transformed into a giant, White-House-fighting robot; a zombified gangsta returning from the grave; the fickle nature of fame; and the horror of child soldiers fighting in Africa. These albums, along with strong collaborations with Jay-Z and Kanye West, poised Lupe Fiasco to become one of the smartest, most sophisticated superstars in rap music.

Lupe’s newest release bears little of the complexity that set him apart from his mainstream contemporaries. At its core, Lasers is the product of meddlesome record executives and an exhausted, frustrated Lupe Fiasco. Lupe admitted in several interviews with Complex, The Chicago Sun-Times and The Guardian that he was essentially pressured into making a commercial album by Atlantic Records, and struggled for any level of control. Much of the album would be at home blaring in night clubs alongside T-Pain and any other artist who has ever worked with T-Pain. As a testament to Lasers’ club sound, an artist by the name of MDMA pops-up repeatedly throughout the album.

The first track, “Letting Go,” starts off well, opening on an ominous and echoing synthesizer under the chorus of “Things are getting out of control / feels like I’m runnin’ out of soul” – prophetic words that could sum up the rest of the album, but a catchy hook, nonetheless. And Lupe’s opening lines of “My self-portrait, / shows a man that wealth tortured / Self-absorbed with his own self / forfeit a shelf full of awards,” establish the artistic opposition between Lupe and the production’s role in Lasers. The bombastic opening of “Words I Never Said,” featuring Skylar Grey, ushers in Lupe’s explosive attacks on terrorism, America, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Barack Obama, Palestine and Israel – “Now we can’t say it ain’t our fault if we never heard it / but if we know better, then we probably deserve it / Jihad is not a holy war, where’s that in the worship? / murdering is not Islam, and you are not observant / and you are not a Muslim / Israel don’t take my side cuz look how far you’ve pushed them.” The overt topic starts off a bit clumsy, but Lupe soon slips back into the steady and breathless flow that he does so well. “Till I Get There” features a bouncy piano piece that’s infectiously catchy, and its subdued tone allows Lupe to pensively return to the topic of the difficulty of fame.

The remaining tracks on the album waver between fun dance beats, annoying over-polished production, mediocre rhymes and forgettable concepts. “State Run Radio” meditates on the media control over what listeners are exposed to and attempts to rebel against the mainstream, but the effect is lost in the horribly commercial rap-core guitar riffs and choruses. An interesting concept in “All Black Everything,” which imagines a world where racial divisions have been flipped thanks to hip-hop (such as Bill O’Reilly reading from the Qur’an, and George Bush sending thanks from Iran), falls flat with uninspired rhymes and so-so beats. And on “Never Forget You,” the usually refreshing John Legend’s appearance brings melodies and lyrics that suggest the painful sentimentality of a jewelry commercial (every kiss begins with… kill me).

Overall, Lasers is a confusing record. But despite its vast shortcomings in production, subject matter and record company meddling, Lupe himself remains fairly strong throughout. His flow and rhymes resist the club-heavy appeal of the record and remind the listener that this is a man capable of provocative and insightful lyricism. Let’s hope for the next effort he is allowed the creative control that spawned Food & Liquor and The Cool. Rumors suggest that his next album might be Food & Liquor 2, the first real effort towards the fabled LupE.N.D. But as has been the case for the last three years . . . who can say.