James Arden checks out the garage rockers latest album.
The Christian rock band from Brighton bring religion to the masses.
Recipe for modern R'n'B album: liberal helpings of guest rappers and an overdose of sexual euphemisms.
Lupe Fiasco is the most unlikely of Hip Hop stars. A devout Muslim with a conscience, Lupe is a throwback to more enlightened times when a Hip Hop artist was a social commentator and educator, not just an entertainer. The Cool is a very different album to 2005’s Food and Liquor, Lupe Fiasco’s promising if inconsistent debut. The Cool documents a comedown and a pretty dramatic one at that. The past year has seen the death of Lupe Fiasco’s father and aunty, the imprisonment of his mentor and business associate Charles ‘Chilly’ Patton and the violent robbery/murder of one of his best friends. So, understandably it is a dark, introverted album.
Now, production-wise this is a departure from Food and Liquor and I must admit that certain tracks left me a little cold. For those who lapped up the lush, soulful horns and sharp rim shots of the debut, The Cool sounds more than a little bit R&B, a little bit poppy, a little bit... Kanye. That’s not to say there aren’t a few classics. Streets on Fire with its atmospheric string part and primitive Amen break drum beat is reminiscent of Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy but without the silly lyrics and the doleful jazz harmonies of The Coolest sound like The Roots at their '‘The Game era best. However, this album wasn’t designed for the dance floor.
Lyrically, Lupe Fiasco is head and shoulders above his contemporaries. The first half of the album is primarily biographical, dealing with the same sort of thematic content that characterised his debut. Tracks such as Superstar, (the single which you have no doubt heard 100 times on Radio One) and Dumbing Down deal with the price of stardom, the judgement of his ‘cool’ obsessed rivals. Although deftly handled, he's just warming up. By the end of the record he has taken on and succesfully conquered such seemingly insurmountable topics as immigration (Intruder Alert) and even child soldiers (Little Weapon) with incredible skill and panache.
I would quote some of the lyrics but it's rare that great lyrics stay great on the cold white of the page. Basically, if you long for the good old days of intelligent, rythmically innovative Hip Hop or if you don't mind having your preconceptions about Hip Hop challenged then invest a bit of time and brain power in this.
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