Album Review: Lupe Fiasco’s LASERS

Lupe Fiasco had a plan. Once upon a time the emcee hailing from Chicago, blessed with a style that few had heard before and the ability to paint vivid pictures with his words, looked to put out three albums. First, he would drop Food & Liquor, where he would allude to his character Michael Young while also introducing himself. Then, he would drop The Cool, a concept album in which Michael Young would encounter The Game, conquering it before becoming consumed by its power and ultimately perishing. Finally, there would be LUPEnd, the final chapter in his trilogy, a summation of Michael Young and Lupe’s parallel journey. Something went wrong though. Food & Liquor and The Cool were created, distributed and labeled classics by those who listened to them. But LUPEnd never followed. Rumors floated in and out of the blogosphere that Lupe was now putting together a completely different trilogy of albums, but that also proved to be false. Finally, three years after The Cool, LASERS surfaced as Lupe’s next album, and the anticipation for another lyrical masterpiece began to bubble.

Behind the scenes things were a mess. Lupe was locked in a battle with his label, Atlantic Records, and a release date for the album seemed like a pipe dream. As details trickled out onto the internet, Lupe stated most of the tracks on the album had been done for years. Lupe’s fans banded together and started a petition to get Atlantic to release the long-awaited album, and their overwhelming perseverance paid off as LASERS finally got a release date. This can only be classified as a mistake.

LASERS is a far cry from what LUPEnd might have been, a distant cousin that you see at Christmas every five years. On “Dumb it Down,” one of the standout tracks off of The Cool, Lupe rapped, “as a G, they told me I should come down cousin/But I flatly refused I ain’t dumbing down nothing.” Somehow, someway, Atlantic was able to turn Lupe into exactly the rapper he was targeting on that song. Atlantic’s fingerprints are all over LASERS, from Lupe’s watered down lyrics that barely resemble the substance and depth Lupe showed on his previous two albums to the awful, poppy hooks on seemingly every track that makes up his third effort. What’s worse is that you can hear that caged Lupe on tracks like “Words I Never Said,” and “All Black Everything,” his immense talent screaming “Let me out!” Unfortunately, the rest of the album acts as a prison guard, making sure Lupe’s undeniable talent doesn’t attempt to escape again. Even the finale track with John Legend feels forced, and Lupe admitted to Complex that the song had been sitting in Legend’s trash bin for years. It’s difficult to listen to really, hearing Lupe become so reserved, his lyrics sounding scared and timid. By the time you get to “Break the Chain” (if you even make it that far), you will want to throw your Ipod across the room.

Lupe claims that this wasn’t “his” album, that Atlantic Records forced him to create these safe-for-radio tunes and call it LASERS. But that doesn’t mean Lupe is safe from blame here. His name is attached to it and ultimately he is the one being judged for this album that should have never came out. Lupe never struck me as someone who would sit back and let the music industry control him, yet that is exactly what he let happen to him. His behavior over the past week has baffled me, telling Complex that he “hates” LASERS and then lashing out at those in the media who had the audacity to give LASERS a negative review. It’s sad to see Lupe in this state, and I hope that his next effort will be free from red tape and once again let his powerful voice shine through. But for now, like the fictional critic on “Dumb it Down” once said, robots and skateboards ain’t cool. And that’s a shame, because they are a hell of a lot cooler than LASERS.