LASERS

BEFORE I BEGIN I NEED TO MAKE A BIT OF CLARIFICATION: I've bought the previous two Lupe Fiasco cd's (Food & Liquor/The Cool) on their release days. I do consider Lupe Fiasco to be a great artist who is concerned about his fans.

In 2006 when I bought Food & Liquor, I actually convinced others to support Lupe because he was "the future of Hip-Hop". In 2006 he was a bright spot musically that only featured the release of a mediocre Jay-Z cd, a mediocre Nas cd, a mediocre Clipse cd a subpar Fat Joe & The Game cd. The only quality mainstream rap came in unexpected areas; one of those areas being Lupe Fiasco. To me, "Food & Liquor" was like a musical ray of light that had finally shined down and illuminated a path to quality Hip-Hop that didn't aim to be self righteous and declarative. It was in the same vein as Kanye West's "College Dropout" in that it was Hip-Hop music for the common man. In 2006, as a skinny college sophomore, I was the common man Lupe spoke to.

I waited a year for the follow up, "The Cool" and although I was lukewarm to it at first I eventually grew to understand the opus that Lupe intended to create for this project. Its theme was the story of hype, street dreams and money, pride and how all those things have fueled the war on the streets (and as a cleaver segue the war of child soldiers). As a concept album, it went against the grain of mainstream rap. In 2009, Lupe released the single "I'm Beaming", a somber ode to gravitating above the troubles in our lives and finding the essence to keep us afloat. It would be 2 years before we would receive a full Fiasco project.

LASERS is that project from Lupe and like "The Cool", it is taking a bit of warming up to. There was much controversy going into the release of this album. Lupe argued that his record label, Atlantic, shelved the album and wouldn't release it because it did not fit the paradigm of music in which it wanted to release. This idea that a music release so dramatically bucked the system that an artists record company refused to release a product excited the rebel and music lover in me. What would say and how could LASERS change Hip-Hop?

It didn't. Instead, surprisingly LASERS is exactly the cd that the record label would want. While there are some uplifting and insightful tracks on it, Lupe seems to be treading the same roads as B.O.B. and many other rappers: making safe accommodating Hip-Hop instead of the abrasive, revolutionary hip-hop that was promised. In fact, the only thing promising from the Lupe release was the manifesto.



And in the end, what I really wanted from the album was substance, not hype. Not marketing and pandering to my beliefs that Hip-Hop could be more and instead not providing. I want music music that speaks to those disenfranchised with the current state of music. It hasn't happened.