hip-hop

Lupe Fiasco ‘Lasers’

With Lupe Fiasco’s long awaited, highly anticipated and highly protested new LP, Lasers set to debut at the top of the US album charts, we thought we’d give it a listen to let the yet undecided amongst you know whether it’s worth your iTunes credit or not…

“I hate this album,” Lupe told The Guardian last week… right… great. So where does that leave the legions of fans who petitioned Touche Lupe’s label, Atlantic to release the disc? What about the followers who partook in Fiasco Friday, where they protested outside the label’s NY headquarters to secure a release date for the Chicago rapper’s third album?

“I don’t hate the music, but I hate the process,” Lupe qualified his earlier outlandish statement… phew! For a second there we thought all of that protesting was for nothing. Well after having heard the album, Lupe, dude, you should hate it! Not cos it’s a bad record (cos it isn’t), not cos Lupe doesn’t deliver his usual fill of clever lyrics intertwined with social commentary (cos he does), but simply because we know that Lupe can do so much better. You only need to look to his first two albums for the proof.

The news that the 29 year old spitter is already gearing up to release another disc later on this year is no surprise, he’s probably trying to erase the memory of Lasers, an album which upon listening to, you can tell that his heart is just not in it. Auto-tune, Trey Songz collaborations and house beats are just not Lupe. It’s clear from the leaked audio of Fiasco’s original version of B.o.B’s Nothin’ On You that Atlantic were trying to push the conscious rapper more in the direction of Bobby Ray, but that’s not what his fans so vehemently remonstrated for.

On the first official single from the album, The Show Goes On, Lupe spits,

“Have you ever had the feeling that you was being had?

Don’t that shit make you mad?
They treat you like a slave, with chains all on your soul.

And put whips up on your back,
They be lying through they teeth, hope you slip up off your path.”

Digs at the label for a single they forced him to release? We thinks so. It’s ironic that one of the strongest tracks from Lupe’s last album The Cool was titled Dumb It Down, but enough about that because picking through the disc there are a few gems to be heard. Lupe’s favourite track All Black Everything is classic Fiasco, on a melodic sample as the MC contemplates if the history of Afro-American culture had been different. The second single Words I Never Said is produced by the go to guy at the moment Alex Da Kid and therefore features the go to hook girl of the moment Skylar Grey. Over a hard hitting synth symphony Lupe gets his politics on spitting,

“I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullshit…”

and

“Gaza Strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say shit, that’s why I ain’t vote for him…”

And it’s truly where Lupe is most comfortable; spitting conscious thoughts, on an underground beat in a mainstream capacity and the sparse use of it just serves to showcase what might have been if Lupe had been free to release the album he and his devoted fanbase wanted.

Our  three favourite tracks: Words I Never Said, Break The Chain and All Black Everything

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