Lupe Fiasco - The Cool
MusicMash Rating: not rated yet
Popmatters Rating: 0
The theme of violence is epitomized on “Little Weapon”, featuring a surprisingly fantastic production from Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump (yeah, you read that correctly). The intense crackling percussion and moaning voices are apocalyptic to the core, over which Fiasco ponders the potentially fatal influence of videogame culture: “Imagine if I had to console / The family of those slayed / I slain on game consoles.” Meanwhile, the UNKLE-produced “Hello/Goodbye (Uncool)” finds the rapper spitting imagery of “thousands of soldiers trained to never miss their targets” over the ruthless rap-rock assault.
However, concept albums are often constricting by definition; thus, is it really a shock that many of The Cool’s finest moments arrive when Fiasco abandons the album’s themes and simply lets his ADD tendencies run wild? The production team (half the time, it’s Soundtrakk) is the real star on tracks. “Gold Watch” is pure gold, during which Fiasco rhymes (“Go-yard bags and green Now `n Laters / Monical magazines and Japanese Manga”—these are a few of his favorite things) over an unintelligible sample of a woman speaking that might sound more at home on Panda Bear’s hard drive, so bizarre it’s actually brilliant.
Film buffs should chuckle at the title of “Paris, Tokyo”, a love letter to the joys of traveling, set to a jazz-hop backdrop evoking A Tribe Called Quest circa 1991. Like Andre 3000 before him, many will wish that Fiasco refrain from singing his own hooks, but who needs nitpicking with a groove like this? Then there’s first single “Superstar”, the obligatory ode to newfound fame, laced with crowd and camera sound effects and topped with another sublime Matthew Santos hook. “Go Go Gadget Flow” is a highlight as well. It’s been a mere year since the hip-hop star’s last album, yet this exuberant energy burst still serves to effectively prove two things: that Fiasco’s rhyme flow has come miles since his big break guest spot on Kanye West’s “Touch the Sky” in 2005, and that he really is “back on my grizzle like a bearskin rug.”
Unfortunately, at such a lengthy runtime, a bit of filler is inevitable, and The Cool becomes another quite good 70-minute album that could have been a damn flawless 50-minute album with a bit of editing. In the iTunes era, is it morally just to simply reedit that 50-minute album yourself? Or should we just be satisfied that Fiasco ditched the 12-minute ‘thank you’ list after the last album? “Dumb It Down” is a biting imitation of inferior rappers—“Make a song for the biches, nigga / Dumb it down!”—except that the subject matter is essentially a repeat of “Daydream” from Food & Liquor, and the music is ironically “dumbed down” to...
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