Artist: Lupe Fiasco Album: Food & Liquor(2006) Label: 1st and 15th / Atlantic iH Rating: 8.5 out of 10 RIYL: Kanye West, Nas' It Was Written
He modeled the album on a Nas album, It Was Written. He had production help from Jay-Z. His vocal style sometimes resembles fellow Chicagoan Kanye West. He's a skater with an artistic edge ala Pharell. The comparisons have been made and you can hear his influences come through on Lupe Fiasco's solo debut record, Food & Liquor. But what makes it an album worth not only your time but your fifteen bucks and the attention of your thoughts is what he does uniquely. Specifically, he brings all those influences together into a cohesive record, focused by a self- and street-conscious ideological approach to music and united by graceful styling, to create a crash course in the last decade of hip hop. Oh and its fun, too.
The first single, his breakout track which dropped shortly before appearing on Kanye's "Touch the Sky" and really beginning to turn heads, was "Kick, Push," a love story set on a skateboard deck. The song shows off his ability as a storyteller, something becoming more and more important for MCs as hip hop evolves as a musical idiom, artform, and lifestyle. Its the one thing Jay-Z never really mastered. Jigga got close on tracks like "Song Cry" and "Soon You'll Understand" but never produced anything that reads as well as it plays; his flow and wordplay bend his words into an engaging story but, though he's great line-to-line and rhyme-to-rhyme, he never acheived the majesty of a really perfect structure in any of his stories. This song has it, with a nicely constructed parallel between the main character's two passions: his skateboard and his skateboarding girlfriend. He pursues each with an easy-going, seemingly effortless, diligence. They are the only thing that matter and he's going to keep after them despite the signs and authority figures that tell him "there's no skating here." He just skates on, finding more rails to grind. Its a forbidden love story with a simple twist: there is no force that can seperate him from his skateboard.
And this is just the beginning, just a taste of the literary depth that marks every track. And thats where Lupe becomes the new and improved hip hop wunderkind impresario. While he invokes the spirits of his forebears, he does so to take them with him as he steps into uncharted hip hop landscapes. I don't want to suggest that hip hop has never been intelligent, thought-provoking, or literary. I only think its never been so singularly focused on being such.
I can only hope it catches on.
Peter Arnberg is a contributing editor for iHighMusic.com and a fine-looking man as well. When not listening, writing, or posting on iHigh he enjoys laughing out loud. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with three two plants named Tuco, Blondie, and Angel Eyes.
Track Listing
1. Intro 2. Real 3. Just Might Be OK 4. Kick, Push 5. I Gotcha 6. Instrumental 7. He Say She Say 8. Sunshine 9. Daydreamin' - Jill Scott 10. Cool 11. Hurt Me Soul 12. Pressure - Jay-Z, , 13. American Terrorist 14. Emperor's Soundtrack 15. Kick, Push II 16. Outro
Further Listening
MIXTAPES (all from 2006): Fahrenheit 1/15: parts 1, 2, & 3 Lupe the Jedi** Nerds in Paradise Chi-Town Guevara
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