After two highly successful and critically acclaimed albums, Lupe Fiasco seemed to go on radio silence. For years Lupe didn’t have any studio releases until 2011 with Lasers, 4 years since his second album. To put it lightly, Lasers was a mixed bag, both from fan standpoint and from the business standpoint. This is a retrospective of Lupe Fiasco’s infamous third album, Lasers.
Part 1: Pre-release
To fully understand the growth and release of this album we have to start at the beginning. And by the beginning, I mean immediately after The Cool. After The Cool, Lupe had planned to release a triple album called “LupE.N.D.” which he forshadowed in the song “Gotta Eat” from The Cool. Lupe had a 5 album deal with Atlantic Records, and “LupE.N.D.” was going to essentially be his final product, trying to fulfill that 5 album record deal. But to put it bluntly, Atlantic Records wasn’t having that, and that would have been a breach of his contract. So the idea of “LupE.N.D” was shelved and Lupe began work on his third album.
The next part of Laser’s troubled history starts in 2009, when the new track “Shinning Down” was leaked. An unmastered, incomplete version of the song was leaked on the internet to mixed reception. One of the criticisms of this leaked track was that it sounded way too similar to Lupe’s previous work on The Cool, which is understandable as the track is literally the same personnel from Superstar with Matthew Santos on the chorus and Soundtrakk for the production. Personally, I loved the song and I was hungry for more Lupe music. This song is an example of the earlier concept of the “LupE.N.D.” album with rumors stating that it was intended as a lead single for one of the triple albums. “Shinning Down” did not make it to the standard release of Lasers, only being on the deluxe editions of the album.
The next single to release was “I’m Beaming” in 2010. This is another track that I feel is super solid and one that I really like. Now it was definitely a prelude to the overall style that we would see in Lasers. Emphasis of trap drums, lots of synthesizers and in general a more “commercial” sound for Lupe. Now don’t get me wrong, Lupe has dabbled in a more “Commercial” sound before in his previous albums with songs like “Hi-Definition” and “Go Baby”, so a “commercial” sounding song or two is not uncommon. This track definitely gives me vibes that Lupe is trying to overcome something and prove himself, which again, I kind of feel is a central idea of Lasers.
“I’m Beamin’” also has some nice word play like the lines “I get my energy from my inner G/I be in outer space but I got inner peace” using like sounding phases and words as well as the contrasting idea of outer and inner. Or the lines “Well you should protest, yeah you should picket me/I'm on a losing strike, I'm on a winning streak” playing off of the idea of protesters using picket signs and the clever idea of a losing strike, still paying off of the idea of protesting. Now I maybe looking too deep into these lines but when Lupe says “I'm feeling really good, me and my different beat/Me and my different drummer; he play the timpanis/See that's what got me here, you hearing me” I feel like that’s his way of saying that Lasers is going to be a different sound for him, with the different drummer signalizing different production partners and he’s insuring his fans that it’s going to be okay because we became his fans because of his lyricism, not necessarily the beats.
Another aspect of this song that I like is how inspirational it is. The whole second verse of this song is some of my favorite from Lupe. It’s not super deep or complex, but I just love the message it brings. It talks about his love and passion for both the hood and the nerd things that influenced him over the years. Lupe understands that he wouldn’t be himself without both elements of his life and encourages the listener to adapt all aspects in their life because that’s what makes them unique. The song itself is called “I’m Beamin’” as if Lupe himself is this super bright figure, but this contrasted with the line “They said my future was dark” is in reference to a song that I will discuss later on in the album, and the title song of the album, Beautiful Lasers.
So after the release of “I’m Beamin’”, Lupe revealed that Lasers was in fact completed, but Atlantic was sitting on the album with no release date. Lupe said this in 2010, mind you, it has been 3 years since his last project in 2007, so after 2 singles, very far apart, fans are eagerly waiting for Lupe’s next project. This got so bad that there was even a protest to Atlantic records for them to release Lasers. After that controversy, Lupe met up with Atlantic records, and the album finally got a release date for March 7th, 2011. “I’m Beamin’” unfortunately received the same fate as “Shinning Down”, losing it’s single status for the album and becoming a bonus track on the deluxe version of the album.
Part 2: Controversy with Atlantic Records
The next single, which would become the albums new lead single, was “The Show Goes On”, and this song feels like a redemption song for Lupe. The song is essentially a song about overcoming obstacles that you face and reminding you that despite everything, the show must go on. This song came out in a super point important in my life. I was in high school when this song came out and I was also in the performing arts in a band program. This song spoke to me differently than Lupe’s previous songs from Food & Liquor and The Cool. Lupe wasn’t telling a story, or being conscious about what’s going on in society, instead this is a song about achieving your goals. No matter what the show must go on, so what are you going to do to make sure that show is going to be good?
Despite this however, even this song has controversy behind it. “The Show Goes On” was a song that Atlantic records was heavily pushing for, not Lupe. In a interview with Complex in February 2011, Lupe had this to say about “The Show Goes On”: “There’s nothing really to tell about that record, to be honest. I didn’t have nothing to do with that record. That was the label’s record. That wasn’t like I knew the producer or knew the writer or anything like that. That was one of those records the record company gave me, [they even gave me] stuff they wanted me to rap about.” Regardless to Lupe felt about this song, it ended up being a massive hit for him and the album.
The next lead single on the album was “Words I Never Said”, which is feel is the closest we get to Lupe’s skater punk style we first saw in Food & Liquor. This song is an anti-authoritarian song featuring Skylar Grey which has Lupe rapping about a ton of controversial topics. Lupe runs the gambit of issues in the US including funding for wars, education reform, bombing, his un-approval of then President Barrack Obama, the American viewpoint on Muslim culture and religion, and social economic inequalities. The song is angry and angsty. I really love the hook and the meaning behind it, how we bottle up emotions or scared to speak up about things we feel passionately about because they are controversial. This song is way different from anything leading up to the release of Lasers but it still fits Lupe’s style as the frustration of living in America as a Black Muslim from the hood is on display here.
So after some successful singles, a lot of brand recognition and fan hype, Lasers officially released on March 7, to a very mixed response. One of the biggest criticisms in the new sound of productions which many at the time called a “pop-rap” sound for Lupe. One reason for this is, outside of “I’m Beamin’” and “Shinning Down”, is that all of the producers on this album didn’t work with Lupe on any of this previous albums. On top of that, after a 4 year long wait, this album is significantly shorter than his previous two albums, clocking in at 57 minutes while his past albums were at least 70 minutes each and they were a year apart from each other. Some critics liked the brighter sound that Lasers gave, the more inspiring lyrics and setting and easier to listen to songs. While other critics felt that Lasers was a disappointment to what they expected from Lupe up to this point. This album is definitely the tale of two sounds, so let’s look into what works and what doesn’t work with Lasers.
Part 3: The Release
The first track of this album is Letting Go featuring Sarah Green. One of the central themes of Lasers seems to be trying get out of a dark place mentally. Letting Go is a very emotional and hard hitting track in which Lupe is rapping about how he is losing himself and straying further from his own perception of his self. He reflects back on his past self with lines like “My self-portrait/Shows a man that the wealth tortured/Self absorbed with his own self/Forfeit a shelf full of awards/Worshiping the war ships that set sail on my sea of life/The way I see my own self and wonder if we still see a light/We was tight, seeing lights/Speaking right and breathing life/Now I see my demons and barely even sleep at night/”
This song is one of the strongest songs lyrically for Lupe on Lasers. These lines are similar to what he’s done in the past rhyming like syllables extremely close together and having them flow into each other. I like the line in particular “Worshiping the war ships that set sail on my sea of life” which has some beautiful alliteration and then the follow up line with “The way I see my own self and wonder if we still see a light” in reference to his metaphorical ship straying so far from shore that he can no longer see the lighthouse, therefore him saying he can no longer see his past self.
He continues with his internal struggle into the second verse with “I'm begging you don't let me go/We vowed like the letter O/To never go our separate ways/To spin off into separate shows/Tired of all the wardrobe changing/Playing all these extra roles/Filled with all these different spirits/Living off these separate souls”. It appears that fame is really getting to him as he’s struggling trying to fulfil everything that everyone wants him to be and him being stretched thin. But then the verse takes a really dark turn.
“Point of life is getting hollow/Can't wait for the exit hole/Give me room to entry wound/Let me in or let me go” Now Lupe is straight up talking about suicide. Now Lasers isn’t a concept album, but there are traces of a storyline coming together in certain parts. Letting Go touches of the feeling of losing yourself. Seeing how you were once happy and how that feeling is slowly going away and that there’s nothing you can do to get it back. It’s the feeling of hopelessness and the struggle to get out of that mental state. Through the whole song Lupe is rapping with a distorted sound and constant post-processed effects to amplify the feeling of anxiety with a constant droning piano loop that never ends, almost like Lupe is stuck in a rut himself. The song transitions perfectly into Words I Never Said, which keeps this edgy sound going and keeps the intensity high.
The next song after Words I Never Said is “Till I Get There”, which is my favorite song from this album. If Letting Go and Words I Never said were the antithesis of pent up stress and angst, then “Till I Get There” is the release. As far as a concept, “Till I Get There” is the duality of inspiration and being hopeful compared to the previous two tracks of dark mental spaces. So for the sake of comparison, let’s put “Till I Get There”, The Show Goes On and “I’m Beamin’” as the light side of the mental health aspect of the album. All of these songs pushs forward the narrative of “there will be better days” and overcoming problems and achieving goals.
“Till I Get There” is Lupe’s release on his issues with fame, the record label and his problems with being a rapper. The song starts with no intro, Lupe just immediately jumps into the first verse. The first verse is his plea to give others, and himself, a second chance as he raps about getting pressure from both sides, the record label and his fans. He raps about wanting to please his fans, while at the same time being bombarded with Boos and him fighting just to survive. Then the hook hits: “I'mma keep it cool, and I'mma do me/It is what it is and that's how it's gon' be/Until I get there/Until I get there/Yeah I got flaws, I know I'm not perfect/But all ups and downs, will soon be worth it/When I get there/When I get there”
It’s such a simple hook, but like “I’m Beamin’”, it hit me so hard personally at the time. Even with his tone of voice, you feel the emotions in. You ever had something crappy happen to you, but you don’t get mad or sad, you kind of just accept it and move on? That’s kind of how this hook feels like. He’s past the point of being angry. He’s past the point of feeling bad for himself. Now he’s accepted what life has given to him and now is looking towards the future. Note how the hook changes midway from “Until I get there” to “When I get there” showing signs of hopefulness. This song isn’t about automatically being in a better mental state, it’s about the first steps to get to that mental state. It takes time to get better mentally, and this song is good example of taking that first step.
The second verse is all about mental health and more so the lack of it being an entertainer. He goes on to talk about how he goes to a doctor because the fame isn’t painless enough but instead of helping him he says he isn’t famous enough and puts two “change” in his cup. The “change” that the doctor puts in there is a metaphor for him “changing” up his sound, since the change will make his name ring more and he’d be even more famous. After that he’s “prescribed” to a publicist who he thinks is going to be a therapist but instead gives him an interview and kicks him out. He then raps about getting injured and instead of him being able to recover, they shove him to concert and forces him to perform, when he’s definitely not in the right state to perform. This whole verse is him explaining how he needed help, either mentally or physically, but because of his fame and role as an entertainer, his well being wasn’t important, but what was important was him performing and entertaining.
The third verse is his turning point. He starts off the verse being hopeful and sort of wanting revenge on those who wronged them and how he’s basically going to show off. But as he’s dreaming this he has a conversation with a younger version of himself who tells him “you’re already here just be yourself from here up”. This is Lupe coming to terms with himself. The things he wanted in the past he has gotten. He feels like he’s lost himself but he really hasn’t. He’s been himself this whole time.
The verse ends with this: “Then he disappeared and I felt something familiar/Something I was taught, something I had lost/If you are afraid of the fear that you gon' change some/All you gotta do is just remember where you came from/”. This kind of completes his journey explored in “Letting Go” in which he felt like he was distancing himself from his past life, when in actuality, he didn’t need to look back at the past, he needed to realize that he’s still the person he always was and that change comes from within, not from outside forces.
Part 4: The Fall Off
So the first 3 tracks of this album are really solid. They all tackle different themes but kind of tell a story of their own. You see a bit of a resolution and connective tissue. However the momentum of this album then stops dead at track number 4, “I Don’t Wanna Care Right Now”. This tracks feels like the most “commercial” song that Lupe has ever done. It’s loud, full of synthesizers, it’s super pop and club sounding, and it’s an extremely dated song. It’s one of those songs where when you think back to the early 2010’s, everything sounded like this. With the staccato chord hits, the auto-tuned hook of MDMA, repetitive stingy bassline, heavy bass…just nothing of this sounds like Lupe to me. When people have criticisms about this album, it’s because of tracks like this. It sounds like Lupe tries to have fun with it, he’s gets into it, but this track does nothing for me. Worst off, this track and the next track “Out of my Head” were singles for the album as well.
So “Out of my head” is another very commercial pop sounding song. The song features Trey Songs who does a fine enough job. He does a good job on the hook, it’s catchy, it’s fine. The song itself just feels like another excuse to have Lupe on the radio. I remember this song playing all the time on Hot 105, which was an adult contemporary R&B radio station in south florida. “I Don’t Want To Care Right Now” feels like it was made for clubs and parties, while “Out of my head” feels like it was made for R&B and “grown folk” radio. I can at the very least tolerate “Out of My Head” but like the previous track, it’s not the tracks I think of when I think of Lupe.
Following “Out of My Head” is “The Show Goes On” and then the track “Beautiful Lasers (2 Ways)”. Thematically, I feel like Beautiful Lasers is the prequel song to “Letting Go”, as they both focus on the topic of suicide. In “Beautiful Lasers” there’s no holding back, Lupe is very upfront about his feelings. We see this in lines like “Can't understand what I'm saying?/Can't figure out what I'm implying?/If you feel you don't want to be alive/You feel just how I am” or “Everything down here sucks/Maybe what's up there is great/We all gotta go one day/I just wanna cut to the chase”. There’s no extended metaphors here or really any clever wordplay, it’s just raw emotion.
This song is once again, a product of the internal struggle Lupe has with stardome, the record label and the pressures of life. And that’s partly why there’s a underlying theme in Lasers. This album, in a way, is tackling mental health and the different emotional responses to it. Maybe you feel angry and defeated like “Beautiful Lasers”. Maybe you learn acceptance and look forward to better days like in “Till I Get There”. Maybe you lash out like in “Words I Never Said”, maybe you have that redemption arc like in “The Show Goes On”. There’s a lot of emotions and mental states of mind that can be filtered from this album.
During an interview with the Chicago tribune Lupe had this to say about the song: “It’s about me contemplating suicide, coming to grips with it. I was reading about Hunter S. Thompson and why he committed suicide, the Kurt Cobains, people in the same business as I am who actually carried it out. You have the corporation in your ear and you’re living a public life, but you also have a private life and are thinking I don’t want to be here. And it also refers to social suicide, where I would just leave, just not do music anymore. I came out of it literally not (caring about any of it). It was a constant set of demands: If you don’t do this interview, you won’t get coverage in this magazine. If you don’t do this song, this album isn’t happening. Saying that I didn’t care became my therapy, my recovery. And I felt like I needed to document it. I felt like if I’m going through that, and I’m a normal person, I felt like other people must be contemplating this too because of similar pressures to do things they felt were wrong or against their better judgment.”
You can criticize this album as much as you want, you have that right and opinion. However, what Lasers did do, that his previous albums didn’t do, and I’d argue his later albums didn’t do, was give us a very personal and emotional Lupe. Yes the complexity of the album isn’t there from The Cool or Food & Liquor, but many aspects of those albums he was telling a story or rapping from the perspective of characters or representations of people. But Lasers gave us a truly impactful look at Lupe’s mental state at that time.
Now I do want to note that this song has a very edgy sound to it. Harsh synths, auto-tuned hooks, overall indie rock sound, and distortion, which helps with the angry sound that the song is pushing for, however, the live recording of this song I feel like is more emotionally effective. The live version of this song that was performed before the album’s release was much more mellow, contemplative and soft. There wasn’t these extreme peaks of volume, there wasn’t any yelling or beat drops, it felt more like a release, or a true musical outlet for his feelings. I wish this version was the style that they went for rather than the studio recording.
Following Beautiful Lasers, comes a few very mediocre tracks. “Coming Up” is a decent upbeat “feel good” track. The song is basically about Lupe being on the road and missing his loved ones, and the production is nice, and is probably my most favorite tracks that features MDMA on it. After that is “State Run Radio” and “Break The Chain” which I feel fall very short. “State Run Radio” is anti-authority sound about censorship and finding “real” music or real artists to be played in popular media or radio and how the powers that be suppress voices from being heard and push forward their agenda. Again, this song is only okay, and it doesn’t hit hard the same way something like “Words I Never Said” or “The Instrumental” or “Streets On Fire”. “Break the Chain” sounds like a extremely generic pop, EDM light song which was very popular at the time. The song is mostly forgettable. Lupe’s first verse is fine, but Sway’s verse and Lupe’s second verse really are not that good. And while we are talking about mediocre tracks, I’ll place “Never Forget You” in the same category. It’s essentially a song about missed ones, past relationships and remembering good times. Lupe sounds very somber and not fully “into it” for this song. John Legend does a decent job on the Chorus but neither artist seems fully interested in performing the song.
The last track that I like to talk about is one of my favorites on the album, “All Black Everything”. Lupe the storyteller is back for this track, with Lupe imagining a world that’s “All Black” in which Africans were never stolen from African and enslaved. He portrays a world where black excellence reigns and the damages of America’s racist practices never happened. In this same song he also does some role reversals with ideas like Fox News being the news source in them middle east or Black people creating the constitution. I really like this track. It feels the most like “classic Lupe” in this album, and it’s a very uplifting inspirational track. This track should have ended the album instead of the disinterested “Never Forget You”.
Conclusion:
So, is Lasers a bad album? No. But at the same time it sticks out as Lupe’s weakest album in his studio run. There’s some really strong points on this album like Lupe’s personal moments in Letting Go, Beautiful Lasers and Till I Get There. There’s some instances of a “classic” Lupe style with songs like “All Black Everything”, “I’m Beamin’” and “Shinning Down”. But at the same time, the lows of this album stick out so much. There are many skippable or mediocre tracks, but that hurts the overall product when the album itself is so short, so each weak track hurts it much more.
The problems behind the scenes that led to this album’s release cannot be overstated. Having the context of how this album became to be, you can give the album the benefit of the doubt. But that doesn’t change the end product and how it was a disappointment to many fans. Despite this, the album did well commercially. It sold a little under The Cool, but it tops more number 1 spots on billboards that The Cool or Food & Liquor and had higher charts than either of the previous albums. Lasers no doubt brought in a lot of new Lupe fans and part of that was because of the new and different styles.
My favorite tracks are as follows: “Letting Go”, “Till I Get There”, “The Show Goes On”, “All Black Everything” and “I’m Beamin’”.