Lupe Fiasco Albums (2)
What The Critics Say
Fully understanding the details of the concept spread across The Cool, first introduced on Food and Liquor's "He Say/She Say" and "The Cool," may only happen after pointing a Lupe Fiasco decoder ring toward Chicago during the vernal equinox, but the synopsis is simple: a fatherless boy is raised by supernatural characterizations of the streets (named the Streets, not to be confused with Mike Skinner) and the game (named the Game, not to be confused with Jayceon Taylor), squanders his potential, becomes motivated by greed, turns to dealing drugs, gets caught up on a few levels. A key piece to understanding the details is "Pills," an "I Gotcha" B-side that can also be found on some non-U.S. copies of Food and Liquor and the MTV2 My Block: Chicago compilation. Coming from an ambitious MC who is only on album two and considering retirement due to various forms of dissatisfaction -- including what the actual streets and the actual game have done to hip-hop -- The Cool has a kind of set-up that may provoke some involuntary tedium preparedness. Lupe incorporates the hyper-expressive, pincushion-sensitive male rock voice wherever it is feasible. (The appearances that come from female voices are much more affecting.) Ditto modern quasi-symphonic soft rock, sometimes toughened up by pensive, churning guitars. Ditto dramatics laid on so thickly that they tend to take a turn toward the acutely melodramatic -- and on this album, strings and other drama signifiers are nearly as integral as the beats beneath them. Even considering the over-abundance of elaboration on all fronts, it's a credit to Lupe that he has made an album that cannot be processed after one or two listens, and if you have the time, its inscrutability turns into mere complexity. (And it turns out that, at the very most, only a third of the album is conceptual, even though it looks and initially sounds like it.) He is one of the most clever artists around, and as far as telling stories with rhymes goes, he's way up there, best exemplified by "Hip-Hop Saved My Life" (a gripping story about a struggling rapper) and "Gotta Eat" (where Lupe's inspiration for metaphors is a cheeseburger, yet it is no more corny than Main Source's classic "Just a Friendly Game of Baseball"). For anyone opposed to their own perception of Lupe Fiasco -- the always-thinking, always-plotting, uptight moralist brainiac, for instance -- The Cool will sound like meandering, overblown prog-rap that is far less tolerable than Food and Liquor. For anyone sick of hearing MCs who boast about themselves (which is akin to taking a stance against R&B songs about love, but whatever), The Cool will sound like a major artistic triumph. It's somewhere in between. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide
'Food and Liquor'
Release Date 8/8/2006
Tracks 16
Label Atlantic / Wea
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
A few years in the making, Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor follows a fruitless association with Epic (as a member of da Pak), an aborted solo deal with Arista (which yielded one promo single), a handful of guest appearances (tha Rayne's "Kiss Me," Kanye West's "Touch the Sky"), and a leak of an unfinished version of the album that set the official release back to September 2006. Still only 25 years old, Fiasco -- a Chicagoan of Islamic faith who owns a number of black belts -- sounds wise beyond his age, rarely raises his voice, projects different emotions with slight inflections, and is confident enough to openly admit his inspirations while building on them. It Was Written is his touchstone, and there are traces of numerous MCs in his rhymes, from Intelligent Hoodlum and Ed O.G. to Nas and Jay-Z. Pharrell (aka Skate Board P) might've considered suffocating himself out of envy with his Bathing Ape sweatshirt when he first heard the album's lead single, "Kick, Push," dubbed a skate-rap classic well before Food and Liquor hit shelves. Like nothing else in the mainstream or underground, its subject matter -- skater boy meets skater girl -- and appealing early-'90s throwback production finally broke the doors down for Fiasco's solo career. Wisely enough, Fiasco doesn't turn the skating thing into a gimmick and excels at spinning varying narratives over a mostly strong set of productions from 1st & 15th affiliates Soundtrakk and Prolyfic, as well as the Neptunes, West, Needlz, and Mike Shinoda. There are strings, smeary synthesized textures, and dramatic keyboard vamps galore -- templates that befit heartbreaking tales like "He Say She Say" and casually deep-thinking reflections like "Hurt Me Soul," where the MC confronts some of his conflicting emotions: "I had a ghetto boy boppa/Jay-Z boycott/'Cause he said that he never prayed to God, he prayed to Gotti/I'm thinking golly, God, guard me from the ungodly/But by my 30th watchin' of Streets Is Watching, I was back to givin' props again/And that was botherin'/'Bout as comfortable as a untouchable touching you." Deserving of as much consideration as the other high-profile debuts of the past few years, up to and including The College Dropout, Food and Liquor just might be the steadiest and most compelling rap album of 2006. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide
