Lupe Fiasco - The Cool
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Lupe Fiasco - The Cool
(Tuesday January 15, 2008 6:05 PM
)
Released on 21/01/08
Label: Atlantic
It's a multi-layered concept album inspired by the past life of a character from the artist's previous LP. It's the work of a rapper who only seems happy when sending his audience scurrying for the dictionary to figure out what it is he means. It's a record that unashamedly chases a hit while chastising others for doing the same thing. Contrary, sometimes pretentious but never less than fascinating, Lupe Fiasco's second album is one of the most vibrant, vital and energised records since...well, since the Chicago native's debut in 2006. This 25-year-old seems to inspire vitriol and rapture in more or less equal measure, and listening to him rhyme, it's easy to see why. Prodigiously, dazzlingly talented, Lupe is the kind of lyricist who lives for the game - his game being the simple if intellectual pleasure derived from toying with the English language and making it bend to your will and whim. Take your favourite rapping writers - Jay-Z and Nas, Biggie, Rakim, KRS and Chuck D, Kool Keith, Eminem: at times, Lupe recalls them all, as his flights of vocab fancy lead him down a series of intriguing back alleys and metaphorical diversions before he flips these songs around and reveals glimpses of an overarching narrative that gives this wildly over-reaching widescreen epic a laser-sharp focus.Grasping elements of the complex concepts will aid a quicker decoding of some of Lupe's gists, but a thorough understanding of the three characters he's created here is of much less importance than an open mind and an attentive ear. After all, if you're worried about sub-texts you'll miss the fact that amid "Feed Me"'s acoustic guitar, all that street-smart lingo isn't about a crack dealer, but a hamburger ("He had a whole lotta cheese / Plus he was a Mac…made a lotta niggas fat / Bite me, that's the way it's goin' down"). And if you spend too much time trying to float down Lupe's stream of consciousness during the vituperative attack on brain-dead rappers, "Dumb It Down", the song's exquisite construction - rhyme scheme, themes, verse structure, choruses; all add up to deliver the literal meaning the words skirt artfully and deliberately around - will pass you by. There are those who have found fault with the beats, the lush blends of sampled drums, strings and guitars; who don't care for singer Matthew Santos's Chris Martin impersonation on "Superstar", the wickedly witty examination of fame's allure...
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