Such is the dilemma with Lupe Fiasco’s Food and Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt.
Or, in other words, if The Black Album would have been named Reasonable Doubt 2, would taste-makers and fans have christened it a modern day classic almost immediately? But even if that’s the case, why set yourself up for the impossibility of recreating a past work of greatness? It instantly puts the listener on the defensive, looking for reasons to prove how the set doesn’t deserve the name it was given, rather than looking for reasons to accept it as a new and completely removed-from-that-place-and-time piece of art. Maybe these artists feel that using a title more than once is supposed to imply that these are more important records than the others that surround them. The move is detrimental if only for much expectation it brings. We’d probably be on Ready to Die 6 by now. But even though his sequel was able to produce a few smash hits, there was something a bit off-putting about resurrecting the Chronic brand, considering how much holy water was initially sprinkled on his 1992 debut. Dre had a little more success with his rebranded The Chronic when he released The Chronic 2001. Even The Blueprint 3, which wasn’t a bad album by any stretch of the imagination, failed to live up to the original Blueprint hype. Jay-Z’s decision to follow up his second masterpiece, The Blueprint, with The Blueprint 2, an ambitious double disc that was widely chided for staining the Blueprint namesake, wasn’t just criticized, it was utterly dismissed. Fiasco is equally capable of delivering incisive political observations (“American Terrorist”) and scabrous commentary on the state of the Hip-Hop nation, but Lupe is at his best when spitting boy’s eye view coming of age narratives that blend the expansive ambitions of adolescence with the gritty texture of everyday life.Why the hip-hop community loves to embrace repeat record titles is beyond logical comprehension.
And though Fiasco occasionally reverts to awkward platitudes, for the most part he remains as lyrically inventive as he is technically gifted. Those looking for more of the breathless, Escobar inspired flow that won Fiasco a key spot on Kanye’s storming “Touch the Sky” will not be disappointed. Instead, Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor provides an album's worth of grandiose, soul steeped beats and skillfully elliptical lyrical virtuosity. Don’t be fooled by the goofy retro futurism of the album cover, which shoots for a Bambaataa aping electro cool but winds up looking more like a Gap ad gone horribly awry, Lupe Fiasco is neither a po-faced classicist nor a Beans inspired ‘80s revisionist.
0 kommentar(er)
