Send "Lupe Fiasco " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 One of the few things more depressing than actually listening to Lupe Fiasco's new album, Lasers, is imagining the monumentally emasculating studio sessions it took to make it. It's easy for label heads to see the commercial success of arena-rap like "Empire State of Mind" and "Love the Way You Lie"-- or crossover debuts such as Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday and B.o.B.'s The Adventures of Bobby Ray (Lupe turned down the Alex Da Kid beats to "Airplanes" and the Smeezingtons' "Nothin' on You") -- as a public mandate for more of the same. But wouldn't it just be easier to find someone down for the cause rather than to remake the public persona of someone who's already established?Lasers simply sounds bad, playing against every single one of Lupe Fiasco's strengths and creating new weaknesses. Surveying the current pop-rap landscape and retaining nothing worthwhile, it's at once chaotic, bored, and yet unyieldingly abrasive-- overblown, forced choruses, rawk guitar tracks that had to be laid down by a guy with a ponytail, mixing as subtle as a nu-metal record. There's a guy on several of these songs singing putrid hooks through what sounds like vocal filters retrieved from Dan Deacon's recycle bin-- he's named MDMA. This is a coincidence of cosmic proportions. And then there's single "The Show Goes On", so gallingly lazy, I'm at least willing to view it as some sort of next-level parody of A&Rs asleep in the hit factory-- it would certainly be a more clever indictment than "Dumb It Down". This is one that "interpolates" Modest Mouse and trades Isaac Brock's fuck-all optimism for Lasers' most blatant attempt to siphon juice from Recovery's redemption-story treacle. Look, "Float On" is a great song, not a sacred text but interpolated into a half-Branson, half-Disney brass fanfare somehow cheapens it worse than any appearance on Kidz Bop or "American Idol". But if this was simply "man, shame about some of the beats and hooks," someone might assume they stumbled onto a review of Food & Liquor or The Cool. Whether it's self-sabotage or a total lack of inspiration, the major difference here is that Lupe isn't working hard or playing hard. Doing just enough to escape his 16 bars before the next bombshell chorus blows, he fills his verses with guh-inducing wordplay, one-note concepts (the central metaphor of "Out of My Head" was deep enough to support a Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant movie), or stock attempts at anguish ("Beautiful Lasers (2 Ways)"), uplift ("Coming Up"), and non-conformity ("State Run Radio")....full text |
| Popmatters |
| It seems like my theme this week is reviewing long overdue, classically delayed hip-hop releases. First, there was Saigon’s The Greatest Story Never Told, an album that took four years to release despite big names like Just Blaze and Jay-Z involved. Despite the massive gestation period, Saigon’s album proved to be a release worth waiting for, and disproved the notion that a delayed rap album is delayed for a reason. But on the other hand, there’s Lupe Fiasco’s Lasers. Much like Saigon, the process of releasing this album had Fiasco seriously contemplating retirement, so much so that he originally titled the album LupEND and hoped to use the sessions as an opportunity to bow out of the industry with his dignity intact. But as the months and years went by, it became apparent to Lupe and his fans that whatever he wanted to do wasn’t going to fly. Apparently, with the hype he’d garnered, it was time for him to deliver a bona fide hit. When he declined those hits (“Airplanes” and “Nothin’ on You”, both of which went to B.o.B.‘s pseudo-rap debut) the shit began to hit the fan. Atlantic viewed Lupe as not only a monetary liability, but an artist who plainly refused to succumb to the will of their contract. Months of back and forth ensued before the fairly anticlimactic resolution that Lasers would indeed be released, if only Lupe Fiasco would bend to the label A&R’s wills and in return they would leave him alone when he started work on a sequel to Food & Liquor. Shortly after, the Kane Beatz produced “Show Goes On” hit MTV and radio with a gratuitously uncreative sample of Modest Mouse’s “Float On”, complete with disgustingly gaudy Kidz Bop-style re-singing of the original Modest Mouse vocal. Lupe Fiasco continued to spit his political lyrics, though slightly subdued, but it would take Herculean levels of consciousness and humanistic insight to overcome what amounts to the most bastardized sampling of a former hit since Eminem’s “No Love” or P. Diddy’s heyday. So I suppose with the parameters of the album in plain view, it’s fairly easy to understand why Lasers is awful. There are many songs here, notably the first three four tracks, anything involving MDMA and the John Legend finale, that simply don’t feel like Lupe Fiasco tracks. He’s often put in this ridiculously uncomfortable position of trying to be and satisfy himself while trying to fit himself into the music he’s been, quite literally, handed by his label and told “rap on this or else”. “Words I Never Said” is particularly heinous. The track feels like Alex da Kid is punishing Lupe for deeming his previous megahits unacceptable. Lupe spits some of the hottest lyrics you’ll find on the album, but thanks to a four-minute runtime consisting mainly of Skylar Grey’s bland chorus it’s going to take a truly dedicated Lupe Fiasco fan to give his words their necessary burn. In a somewhat surprising turn, this is one of the few songs Lupe admits to having an open hand in, having discussed it with Alex for a couple years prior to its release....full text |
| Music |
| After spending some time with Lupe Fiasco's third album, it is hard to believe Atlantic Records ever seriously considered shelving it. It reportedly took an online petition last fall for the label to finally give the album a release date, but anyone that cannot hear the greatness here should probably find a new line of work. Lupe addresses the drama with the label stalling the release date over a jangling piano on "Till I Get There", comparing his relative lack of success in the industry with a sickness and getting prescribed a publicist, magazine covers and concerts to cure him. The positive spirit that finds a witty Lupe examining the situation in a hopeful, albeit frustrated, light reins supreme over the album. "Beautiful Lasers (2 Ways)" finds a suicidal Lupe struggling with the success of his fans despite not approving of himself, "I can't win if it's me against me / One of us ain't gonna survive / My heart's been broke for a while / Your's been the one keeping me alive". For someone who opens the album discussing evaporating inspiration, on the scratchy rapped twinkling piano piece "Letting Go", Lupe has a lot on his mind. Skylar Grey follows up her star-making Grammy appearance with another great hook over a sluggishly stomping beat and buzzing synth melody on standout "Words I Never Said", as Lupe regrets not saying more about the ills in the world, "If you turn on TV, all you see is a bunch of what the f*cks / Dude is dating so and so, blabbering 'bout such and such / And that ain't Jersey Shore, homey, that's the news / And these the same people supposedly telling us the truth". Drippy synth and jangling piano dance around each other on uplifting "Coming Up", a fantastic shout-out to independent women reminiscent of 2Pac's "Keep Your Head Up". The flickering guitar and borrowed hook from Modest Mouse's "Float On" drive his hopeful message of not letting the ghetto hold you back on "The Show Goes On"....full text |
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