Lupe Fiasco - The Cool
MusicMash Rating: not rated yet
www.blender.com Rating: 0
With his 2006 debut, this Chicago native was heralded as the savior who would snatch back hip-hop from evil ring-tone rappers and mean-mugging mooks. The conflicted rhymes and warm, jazzy beats elevated Lupe above his back-patting conscious-rap contemporaries.
“I ain’t dumb down nothing,” the brainy MC now says self-righteously, in dumbed-down grammar. His labyrinthine wordplay is intact (Jay-Z called Lupe a “genius writer” in Blender), but he has turned surly and depressive, replacing exuberance with an aloof nihilism and egotism: According to The Cool, if Lupe can’t save hip-hop from itself, nobody can.
The CD is loosely tied together by a browbeating concept that condemns the glorification of Scarface-style violence and disposable pop-rap, but the moralism is as trite as a Tony Montana reference. “Streets on Fire” even decries mainstream hip-hop as a virus that could “kill the whole world.”
There are breaks from the jeremiads. “Gold Watch” is an airy rundown of endearing eccentricities—“I am American mentally with Japanese tendencies and Parisian sensibilities,” he claims while bigging-up Montblanc pens and green Now and Laters. The mutating, offbeat musical excursions—a little new wave here, a little arena rock there—liven up the CD. And on “Hi-Definition,” Lupe offers a vulnerable and¤starr...
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