Lupe Fiasco’s debut album Food & Liquor was a classic album and represented a new sub-culture of hip hop music. However Lupe’s sophomore album, Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool, is arguably his best work to date. This album has so many classic tracks, excellent lyrics and word play and such a deep and compelling album from almost all angles. This is a retrospective of Lupe’s second album, Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool.
Part 1: Superstar
The Cool is undoubtably the Lupe album I’ve listened to the most. There’s so much depth to the lyrics, so much catchy and unforgettable songs, so much amazing imagery associated with this album. Lupe not only expanded his skillset this album, but his appeal as well. Food & Liquor was appealing to this anti-authority culture, skateboarder and nerd mixture. But The Cool seems to reach for darker tones, more emotional and personal storytelling and constant parallels and double meanings.
Let’s start with the lead single “Superstar”. Probably the most perfect combination of talents make up this song. “Superstar” is produced with Soundtrakk, which I feel is the best producer that Lupe has ever worked with, is lifted by Matthew Santos’ floaty, dreamlike vocals in a insanely catchy and memorable hook. Lupe’s lyrics is what takes this song to new heights and from just a catchy pop rap song. What starts off as a song about Lupe’s new found fame starts to have connections to his character of Mike Young in which this album revolves around. Take these lines for example: “And then it hit me/Standin' outside of heaven waitin' for God to come and get me/I'm too uncouth/Unschooled to the rules and too gum shoe/Too much of a new comer and too un-cool”. In here he’s both referring to himself and the character of Mike Young. “Standin’ outside of heavin watin’ for God to come and get me” is reference to Mike Young being this character who dies and finds himself in purgatory, expecting to get into heaven. But thanks to his deeds from his past life he’s not accepted in. At the same time Lupe references himself as a new comer into the rap game and him not “following the rules” and him being “un-cool”, which is a double reference to him not following a traditional rap image as well as a reference to Mike Young believing that he’s “the coolest”.
He makes a another reference later in the same verse to “The Cool” from Food & Liquor when he says “Go back, whatever you did you undo” referencing Mike Young coming back to life from that song. Then Lupe goes back to real life references in which he makes this over stated description of how bright the spotlights are and how overwhelming they are, but despite how “blinding” they are, he says that “most of us don’t want it to fade”. In which he is saying how superstardom can leave you blind, yet wanting more because it’s so appealing. But then from a technical standpoint this second verse is so sick. Go back and listen to the verse and listen to the words Lupe puts an emphasis on. Almost through that entire verse every major rhyme has emphasis on the “ay” sound and he connects these rhythms through various middle and end lines, but it all flows so effortlessly that if you wasn’t paying attention you’d just miss it.
Part 2: The Cool as a concept album
So let’s talk a little about how this album is a concept album. In a traditional sense, a concept album is an album in which the individual tracks represent an overall theme or story. Not every song on this album fits into this narrative, but there is a handful of songs that do. The concept this album establishes is an expansion of the story explored in “The Cool” from Food & Liquor. In this song a drug dealer comes back to life and goes back to the place where was killed and confronts his past. This character is named in this album as Michal Young. Several songs like “The Coolest”, “The Die”, “Put You On Game”, & “Gotta Eat” all take part in the story of Michael Young from various angles.
Let’s start with the most prevalent one to the story, “The Coolest”. First off with this song you hear the grave opening referencing Michel Young coming back to life from “The Cool”. However, “The Coolest” is actually a prequel story, establishing the life of Michael Young before his death. We get some clever word play with the lines “Forgive My Cool Young History” which can be literally interpreted as “Michael Young History”. The whole first verse Michal Young is talking about his love for this girl. This girl is a personification for the “streets” or the “hood”. Lupe raps about how all of the vices of being in the hood attracts Michael Young and how his love for the streets trumps everything in his life. Michael Young literally thinks that the hood would give him status as he states “The purpose of our scene/the obcence obsession for the bling/she would be my queen, I could be her king/Together, she would make me cool/and we would both rule/”.
Lupe raps the second verse in relation to Michael Young giving himself completely to the streets. He references his older song “He Say, She Say” with the lines “Younger outstanding achieving up-and comers/The ones that had deadbeat daddies and well-to-do mommas/But not well enough to keep 'em from us/The ones that were fighting in class who might not pass/Rap record pressured to laugh at a life not fast”. Aside from the nod to the song “He Say, She Say”, these lines show the breakdown of not having a father figure in these young men’s lives. Despite the Moms trying to do the best for their child, that fatherless life style makes them prime “achieving up-and-comers” to be taken up by the streets. And that last line, “Rap record pressured to laugh at a life not fast” is a commentary on how rap pushed forward these notions of the streets and how the influence of the rap game pressures these young men into living fast and dangerous life styles.
This isn’t even the only refence to songs from “Food & Liquor” either. When talking about Michael Young’s baby mama Lupe raps “Do I lover her?/Said, I don’t know/ Streets got my heart, Game got my soul/one time missing sunshine will never hurt your soul/”. So in this section the streets and the hood is literally asking Michael to choose between them and his family. Michael saying “one time missing sunshine” is a refence to the song “Sunshine”, which is a love song in which Lupe raps about his love being his sunshine. Him saying that one time missing sunshine is personifying the loss of his love for this girl. That then follows up with “hurt your soul” which is a reference to the song “Hurt Me Soul” also from Food & Liquor. Michael Young then abandons his baby mamma stating “You gave me a baby, but what about lately?” while going back to the streets because the streets gave him so much more.
And through all of this, Lupe starts off the song with the line “Lord Please have sympathy” and “I Love The Lord”, which shows Michael Young’s struggle between his religion and what he has done. He constantly references God and religion throughout the whole song with lines like “The Trinity: Her and I, Caine”, in reference to the “Holy Trinity” of “The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit” but replaces that with “The Streets, Michael Young and Cocaine”. “And Pray to God that the flood subside/cause you gon’ need a sub til he does reply” in reference to 40 days and 40 nights of flooding and the second coming of christ. “And Seek unholy grails like a fool”, which references to the holy grail, and how people like Michael Young chases unholy grails like the vices that the streets provides. “No heaven up above you, no hell underneath ye/ and no one will receive thee” in reference to Michael Young being stuck in purgatory as reference in “Superstar” and “So Shed No tear when we’re not here/And Keep your faith as we chase, The Cool” wrapping this whole song up basically saying how the the hood, the streets and the game is a religion all on itself.
And that’s just one song. Then you have “Gotta Eat” which goes through Michael Young’s career as a drug dealer personified through some amazing food related puns and word play. Then there’s “The Die” which explains how Michael Young was set-up by his friend and got him killed. That then immediately goes into “Put You On Game” in which Lupe raps from the perspective of a Gun, and how Guns caused so much damage to lives, but yet is glorified and commercialized in everyday life and how that gun caused the end of Michael Young’s life.
Part 3: Lupe's undeniably insane lyricism
Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool has a little more outside of the “concept” album. Lupe has some more classic tracks on here like “Paris, Toyko”, “Hip Hop Saved My Life”, “Dumb it Down” and “Gold Watch”.
“Dumb it Down” demonstrates Lupe’s skill as a lyricist. “Dumb it Down” is Lupe’s answer to critics of Food & Liquor due it’s unconventional style of hip-hop. This is primarily tackled in the Hooks in which Gemstones questions Lupe’s music with statements like “You going over n- heads, Lu (Dumb it down!)/ They telling me that they don't feel you (Dumb it down!)/We ain't graduate from school, n- (Dumb it down!)/Them big words ain't cool, n- (Dumb it down!)” or “You putting me to sleep, n- (Dumb it down!)/That's why you ain't popping in the streets, n- (Dumb it down!)/You ain't winning no awards n- (Dumb it down!)/Robots and skateboards, n-? (Dumb it down!)”
Lupe responds to these criticisms with complex word play and flow. For example in the first verse, Lupe’s rhyming scheme has him rhyming words on unstressed beats and rhythms. On top of this his rhymes are so close together that the actual rhyming flows through each line giving him multiple rhymes per line. An example of this is in these lines “I'm not a listener or a seer so my windshield smear/Here you steer, I really shouldn't be behind this/Clearly 'cause my blindness, the windshield is minstrel/The whole grill is roadkill, so trill and so sincere/Yeah, I'm both them there”. He layers all of these rhymes with almost every other word so you get the stressed and unstressed beats of the rhymes.
Then in terms of lyricial references, Lupe starts each verse in this song with a personification of the “Three Wise Monkeys” Lupe starts the first verse with “I'm fearless, now hear this, I'm earless/And I'm peerless, that means I'm eyeless/Which means I'm tearless, which means my iris/Resides where my ears is, which means I'm blinded/” which in reference to the wise monkey who “Sees No Evil” who covers his eyes so that he won’t see evil. This also references to the wise monkey who “Hears No Evil” as he raps about how he’s earless and how his iris resides where his ears would be, making him blind and deaf. He carries this on into the beginning of the second verse where he raps “And I'm mouthless, which means I'm soundless/Now as far as the hearing, I've found it/” in refence to the wise monkey who “Speaks No Evil” in which Lupe finds his hearing back but now can’t speak, which with the proverb of the “Three Wise Monkeys” every monkey has something that other can do and vice versa.
Now one of the ideals behind the “Three Wise Monkeys” is that instead of dealing with whatever information head-on, the monkeys decide to block out that information by forcing themselves to not consume that information. So if the Monkey can’t see, then they can’t visualize what is in front of them. If the Monkey can’t hear, then they can’t hear the information being told to them, and if the Monkey can’t speak, then they can’t respond to the information given to them. So in a sense, this can be viewed as two different ways. It can mean that Lupe’s critics are the “Three Wise Monkeys” stuck in their ways not allowing Lupe’s style to get to them and block out him out or it could be viewed as Lupe literally blocking “evil” away from him to block out the critics of his work. Lupe then takes this ideal one step further by starting the third verse with “And I'm brainless, which means I'm headless/” in which if he is brainless, then no information is taken in at all. The whole idea of the “Three Wise Monkeys” is that even if one of them can’t speak, they can still hear or see, while the idea of them being brainless or headless means that none of those senses of speech, sight or sound will be used.
Lupe the story teller returns several times as well in tracks like “Hip-Hop Saved My Life” in which he raps about a up and coming unsigned underground rapper trying to make a name for himself and get out of the hood or “Intruder Alert” in which Lupe raps several small stories about people coming in terms with people having trust issues or having moments in which an “Intruder” enters their life and how they react. But also, Lupe has a tinge of that indie rock and alternative style in this album as well. We see this in tracks like “Streets on Fire” in which the whole song is about a uncontrollable virus that spreads and it’s impact on the world. In the song everyone blames each other for the origin of the disease and this is strengthened by down-tempo moody beat with Matthew Santos’ dreary lyrics and defeated tone of voice. Lupe raps about this from perspectives of different groups like Revolutionaries who blames the problems on society and the media, or the religious against the morally corrupt or from the perspective of different social economic groups. The song basically shows how the impact of world wide disaster causes people to lose trust and the breakdown of society and how fragile the establishes of government and societal norms. We also getting another rock styled track similar to “The Instrumental” from Food & Liquor with “Hello/Goodbye (Uncool)”. Lupe takes this one a little further into the rock style by working with Unkle which gives this track a more independent rock and trip-hop sound with these dark undertones and progressive dynamic increase in distortion and edge.
Conclusion:
While I feel like this album is almost perfect, there is a few tracks that just don’t hit well with me, those being “Fighters” and “Go Baby”, which is so unfortunate because they are at the tail end of this album. This is even worse because the two tracks before these are “The Die” and “Put You On Game” which I feel would have been a more impactful ending to the album as it ends the story of Michael Young and his demise. I also find “Go Go Gadget Flow” and “Hi-Definition” to just be “okay” tracks, nothing to remarkable or noteworthy.
In the end however, Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool still stands as a classic and one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time. The complexity of the lyrics, the amazing productions, the flow from track to track, the messages displayed and the use of the concept of Michael Young’s life and circumstances makes this such an amazing product. The Cool still stands today as one of, if not the best of Lupe’s studio albums and releases.
My Favorite Tracks are as follows: “The Coolest”, “Superstar”, “Paris, Tokyo”, “Streets On Fire”, “Little Weapon”, “Gotta Eat”, “Dumb It Down”, “The Die”, and “Put You On Game”.