Lupe Fiasco - The Cool

I got pretty excited when I heard that Lupe Fiasco’s sophomore effort was going to be a full-blown concept album. One person had told me, rather ominously, that it was a “concept album about Islam,” and someone else had told me it was about a dead man who comes back to life. Both sounded promising…well, they were both very wrong. “The Cool” is as much a concept album as The Beatles’ “Sergeant Peppers” – we’ve got a few token tracks to glue the whole thing together and then a load of songs in between that have absolutely nothing in common. But like “Sergeant Peppers,” it’s exactly the album’s rambling, off-the-wall variety that makes it work so well. Instead of just telling us about some guy coming back to life – which he does, on four or five songs – Fiasco spends seventy minutes touching on every subject from immigration (‘Intruder Alert’) to celebrity (‘Superstar’) to hamburgers (the aptly titled ‘Gotta Eat’) with the same unstoppable energy and imagination.

It’s not just a lyrical triumph though. Musically, this is also a far more colourful, inventive and ambitious album than Fiasco’s debut, which, as impressive as it was, struck me as over-produced and slightly monotonous, with damn near every song following the ‘rap verse - glossy pop chorus’ formula. On “The Cool,” Fiasco widens his palette and unleashes a wildly colourful maelstrom of creativity that almost touches OutKast for variety and inspiration.

Standout tracks abound, from the joyous sugar-rush of “Superstar” to the gorgeous, heart-wrenching story-song “Hip Hop Saved My Life,” but the most impressive are those which point in new musical directions, away from his trademark glossy pop-rap sound. The satirical, synth-heavy rumble of ‘Dumb It Down,’ in which guest Graham Burris warns Fiasco that his music is making girls “think smart is cool” is one example. Another is the brilliant ‘Little Weapon,’ in which Fiasco narrates the gripping story of a young African soldier over chopped Gregorian chants and military drumbeats.

My personal favourite, however, is one of the least intricately produced songs on the album: the lovely, low-key love song ‘Paris, Tokyo.’ On here, Fiasco dons his best Q-Tip impression and unleashes a groovy slice of jazz-rap that sounds like a long lost Tribe Called Quest classic. The song proves that Lupe can relax and still be as charming as when he’s being his usual smart-ass self.

I don’t want to be too positive though, because, for all its strengths, “The Cool” isn’t a perfect album. It’s a bit long – the tacky and repetitive ‘Hi-Definition,’ in which guest Snoop Dogg sleepwalks through his verse, could have been cut, and the same goes for the clumsy, poe-faced rock-rap of ‘Hello Goodbye’ – and it’s a bit glossy, with too many songs caked in a soppy sheen of melodramatic strings and synthesizers.

Overall though, “The Cool” is a resounding success, and has achieved the impossible in topping the charmingly precocious “Food & Liquor,” which, à la “Illmatic,” seemed like the kind of debut that would haunt him for the rest of the career. In dispelling any doubts about him being a one hit wonder, Fiasco has proven himself, lyrically and stylistically, as one the most exciting rappers around. Just listen to his knockout vocal performance on ‘Intruder Alert,’ in which he even manages to make the line “the economic pecking order of emergency relief distribution systems” sound awesome. With “The Cool,” Lupe Fiasco may not have created his masterpiece, but he’s getting closer and closer.


"The Cool" released December 18, 2007 by Atlantic Records.
Images courtesy of Atlantic Records and Empire Online.
Published in the Review.