Lupe Fiasco

From the first time I heard Lupe Fiasco on Ye's Touch The Sky I was interested to see what else he was coming with. Kick, Push made the old school skater in me happy, and long for the days of escaping my crazy ass parents for a wild adventures with my dudes, falling on our faces and boosting Newports.

Albums came from Lupe, each had some killer records on them (Dumb Down, Go, Go, Gadget), but I never found myself going full on "fan mode" to the complete projects he released.

He felt like a chick in your phone who was awesome on one date, but once it hit 4-5 dates she just became boring. Not because she wasn't smart, or didn't have her head on right, but shit just didn't click. But every once in a while, you run into her out and give it another shot, only to hit groundhog day all over again.

His Twitter rants also didn't add to cementing any need to follow what he was doing. Granted his frustrations with his label through Lasers were dead on, I still just stopped paying attention.

You know what made me even know he had an album coming, and take ten minutes to check it out?! Fucking Slug from the group Atmosphere had said he preordered it on Twitter, and I thought, "really!?". If it's good enough for Slug to be remotely interested in, then maybe there's something to it. So, I did what any new age skeptic would do in this day and age and I hit up Spotify, because 45 second iTunes snippets weren't doing it.

After hitting play on my morning commute to work, I kept it on repeat all day. Each time thinking to myself, "Fuck, I'm really loving this album! Wait, let's listen one more time, this can't be". But holy kangaroo shit, Lupe made a record that I not only think is his best work to date, but I'm already putting it on my year end list, in fucking JANUARY guys!

Lupe Fiasco not only created a complete piece of stellar music, but he went full on Pink Floyd with the track length and transitions between each song. On some 'Dark Side Of The Boom' shit, the production is lush, heavy ended and detailed without losing its edge.

Mural is the first official song on the album, and it's 8 minutes of lyricism immediately grabs you, sits you down, and unfolds the thoughts of a Chicago poet all in your noise holes. I mean, this shit would make Jay Electronica come out of hiding and bow to the sheer insanity that Lupe spits out. I could seriously write a whole review of that song alone. I won't, but I so fucking could.

Lupe has always had a quality where he could pen thought provoking records about social issues without sounding preachy, or contrived, and he does this yet again here with Prisoners 1 & 2. It's dark, depressing, vivid, and real as fuck with its tales of fights, getting thrown in the hole or being viewed as non human by guards.

The movement in and out of songs is so gentle, you barley realize when he's pulled out, and put you into a different part of his thought process. Such a gentleman.

Body Work is a gorgeous play of words about the balance of sexes and it's complexities. The vocals sung on the hook are so sensual and floaty, mix that with the backing adlibs and the pictures painted with Lupe's verbose virtuosity and you have audio boners in full effect.

The real motherfucking winner with bells balls and banging ass drums is Choppers! The hook with its tales of high end steak on food stamps, background checks on guns and Obama health care are the things of cruising windows down, volume obnoxiously loud, and yelling fuck your block, I'm banging my shit!

The string of troubles, hits and misses he's had to navigate show that if anything, Lupe Fiasco is not a person to lay down and leave quietly. I heavily fucks with Tetsuo & Youth, and will be going back to it frequently over the next 11 months, and beyond. Now to watch Akira.

Tetsuuuuuuooooooo!