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Lupe Fiasco - The CoolAlbum Review by:
John Burnett
Sunday, December 16, 2007
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Imagine having the best of year of your life; a critically acclaimed album, sundry accolades, newfound international notoriety and relative affluence only to have your father pass the following year. Then, your business partner and close confidante is incarcerated on drug charges for nearly a lifetime sentence. After that, you lose another close relative in your aunty as well as a close friend to a violent robbery turned murder. This is the turbulent year Lupe Fiasco had coming on the brink of a 2006 that marked his breakthrough. This melee manifests via his album. His fresh success, extreme remorse, glee and pain coalesce to form his sophomore album, The Cool.
As to be expected, there are several layers to The Cool. On the superficial layer, Lupe pays tribute to a few domestic destinations starting of course with his hometown on “Go Go Gadget Flow.” Over a track laden with violin strokes and slapping drums, Lupe adds a new trick to the arsenal with a rapid-fire flow reminiscent of local Chicago favorites (Twista & Psycho Drama) just to remind you where he’s from. “Hip Hop Saved My Life” puts Lupe in the guise of a grinding Houstonian as he, graphically, narrates the story of “an ex D-Boy with a B-Boy flow” who’s only means to escape peddling crack and poverty is spitting rhymes. Lupe then takes you to the Left Coast with a welcome and impressive assist from Snoop Dogg on “Hi-Definition.” Lu briefly touches on carrying the burden of Chilly’s incarceration and Stack Bundle’s death along with the added weight of constant reproach from outsiders (Oprah, Imus) on Hip Hop.
Beneath this layer, we find Lupe attempting to cope with his newly acquired status as a hip hop icon. On the wistful and jazzy “Paris, Tokyo” he rhymes about being sorely missed by a love one while he meanders from place to place on world tour stops; dually throwing a nod to the likes of De La Soul, ATCQ and CL Smooth with the lounge-like feel of the track. “Superstar” featuring Matthew Santos presents a negative view of fame speaking on the wear and tear of an industry that allows for no holidays ("though I need a holiday like lady who sung blue"), and his difficulty to find acceptance being “too uncouth/unschooled to the rules and to gum shoe/too much of a newcomer and too uncool.” Yet, Lupe and his fancy and/or ghetto chick (depending on 1st or 2nd hook) come to terms with his varied eccentricities (playing Street Fighter, watching Manga, wearing Maharishi) on “Gold Watch.”
Enter, Michael Young History (my cool young history), also known as the Cool and the commencement of the concept portion of the album. In short, the Cool is a continuation of the fatherless son from “He Say, She Say” who gets swept into the Streets and the Game only to become a hustler and meet a fateful ending. The Cool along with the Streets (a feminine personification of the streets) and the Game (a male personification of the hustler’s game) form an unholy trinity. On “The Coolest” Lupe introduces listeners to the Cool and the Streets love affair in a dramatic fashion with “she would be my queen/I could be her king, together/she would make me cool and we would both rule, forever/and I would never feel pain/and never be without pleasure ever a-gain.” Of course it’s all imagery and not in the literal sense. We’re not introduced to the Game until later in the album on the dark “Put You On Game.” Here Lupe enumerates the long list of corrupt and nefarious activities the Game has taken part in throughout history. The climax of the tale comes with the death of the Cool on “The Die” featuring Gemstones. Accessing the machine gun flow, Gemstones fires out the plot to assassinate Michael Young History while Lupe acts as The Cool’s homie informing him of the plots for his homicide. Throughout the song it switches from Lu to Gems’ perspective until the story completes with gunshots riddling the Cool’s body.
At initial glance the album seems to be arbitrary; just a random collection of songs with little to no coherency. But actually, there’s a unique balancing effect of the various tracks on The Cool. “Superstar” has Lupe struggling to deal with how he’s an outcast in the music industry while “Gold Watch” shows his acceptance of it. “Paris, Tokyo” goes international and “Go Go Gadget Flow” is strictly for residents of the Chi accessing a Crucial Conflict cadence (M-a-d-i to the s to the o-n) that only Chicagoans and a few Midwesterners would recall (“Hay”). “Dumb it Down” is dense with abstract imagery and wordplay while “Hi-Definition” is direct in its lyricism. The Cool is a puzzle for fans to put together overtime and not overnight but will also be a downfall to those who want something that’s ready pop. Lupe shows a few new looks flow-wise rhyming over more keys this time around and faster, on occasion, but still needs to show improvement technically as a rapper i.e. breath control. Overall, The Cool is a revitalizing listening experience that pays homage more so to the artistry then the business of Hip Hop.
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