Fully understanding the details of the concept spread across The Cool, first introduced on Food and Liquor's "He Say/She Say" and "The Cool," may only happen after pointing a Lupe Fiasco decoder ring toward Chicago during the vernal equinox, but the synopsis is simple: a fatherless boy is raised by supernatural characterizations of the streets (named the Streets, not to be confused with Mike Skinner) and the game (named the Game, not to be confused with Jayceon Taylor), squanders his potential, becomes motivated by greed, turns to dealing drugs, gets caught up on a few levels. A key piece to understanding the details is "Pills," an "I Gotcha" B-side that can also be found on some non-U.S. copies of Food and Liquor and the MTV2 My Block: Chicago compilation. Coming from an ambitious MC who is only on album two and considering retirement due to various forms of dissatisfaction -- including what the actual streets and the actual game have done to hip-hop -- The Cool has a kind of set-up that may provoke some involuntary tedium preparedness. Lupe incorporates the hyper-expressive, pincushion-sensitive male ock voice wherever it is feasible. (The appearances that come from female voices are much more affecting.) Ditto modern quasi-symphonic soft rock, sometimes toughened up by pensive, churning guitars. Ditto dramatics laid on so thickly that they tend to take a turn toward the acutely melodramatic -- and on this album, strings and other drama signifiers are nearly as integral as the beats beneath them. Even considering the over-abundance of elaboration on all fronts, it's a credit to Lupe that he has made an album that cannot be processed after one or two listens, and if you have the time, its inscrutability turns into mere complexity. (And it turns out that, at the very most, only a third of the album is conceptual, even though it looks and initially sounds like it.) He is one of the most clever artists around, and as far as telling stories with rhymes goes, he's way up there, best exemplified by "Hip-Hop Saved My Life" (a gripping story about a struggling rapper) and "Gotta Eat" (where Lupe's inspiration for metaphors is a cheeseburger, yet it is no more corny than Main Source's classic "Just a Friendly Game of Baseball"). For anyone opposed to their own perception of Lupe Fiasco -- the always-thinking, always-plotting, uptight moralist brainiac, for instance -- The Cool will sound like meandering, overblown prog-rap that is far less tolerable than Food and Liquor. For anyone sick of hearing MCs who boast about themselves (which is akin to taking a stance against R&B songs about love, but whatever), The Cool will sound like a major artistic triumph. It's somewhere in between.
I've never really been much of a hip-hop head, per se. I always enjoyed Eminem, Jay-Z, and a few other artists, but for the most part I was turned off by the glorifying of wealth (something those of us without it can get bitter about) and lack of true content. So it was only because I had a gift card to a CD shop that I purchased Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor , a hip-hop album that my friend ha...
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8.5 out of 10 StarsThe Good: "Go Go Gadget Flow," "Gotta Eat," and "Little Soldiers" are excellent songs, must-downloads.The Bad: Production is mediocre in some spots.Lupe Fiasco has been pegged as a artist with potential to become the next big thing in hip hop. His debut album, Food & Liquor, was a huge critical success and built a large following of devotees, though sometimes it seems as if t...
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Lupe Fiasco dropped his sophomore release, The Cool just today and already the positive reviews are rolling in. While Amanda Diva is warming the air with her smooth sounds this week, Lupe is freezing out the competition. All the silliness that has surrounded his rep in the last few months is forgotten the instant the music starts. Check out these three diverse reviews of The Cool:Art of Rhym...
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Lupe Fiasco's "Dumb It Down":
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Lupe Fiasco delivered a great performance of "Superstar" alongside Matthew Santos on last night's Late Show With David Letterman. It was Dave's first night back after a two month layoff due to the writer's strike. I don't know about you guys but I was getting sick of the re-runs... Check out the performance below.
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I don't really watch alot of rap videos anymore, mostly because a majority of the ones played these days are crap. Just ask Phonte from Litte Brother: (opening verse from LB's new album) "Had to tell my son, 'Turn that bullshit off! Them ain't video's n***a, that's psychological warfare'"Well, Lupe Fiasco and a select few other rap artists (kanye, common, kweli, etc) have been playing their pa...
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I'm really excited about this album. I heard it a few weeks ago at a private listening party, and I was impressed. It's dope, and what I heard was better than Food & Liquor, about half of which I'm a huge fan of... http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPreorder?id=269521773&s=143441
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So what's really good with Lupe Fiasco? From interviews, sounds like he's a tad bit jaded by the way things have turned out with his rap career. In this business I guess you can only go but so far when corporations at the end of the day hold whether or not you will be famous in the balance. (One day we'll realize that the music we hear on commercial radio and most every media outlet is programm...
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8.5 out of 10 StarsThe Good: "Go Go Gadget Flow," "Gotta Eat," and "Little Soldiers" are excellent songs, must-downloads.The Bad: Production is mediocre in some spots.Lupe Fiasco has been pegged as a artist with potential to become the next big thing in hip hop. His debut album, Food & Liquor, was a huge critical success and built a large following of devotees, though sometimes it seems as if t...
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Lupe has been releasing videos from "The Cool" for just about six months now, which is a rarity in today's climate. Most artists are only shooting one or two videos to keep costs down. "Hip Hop Saved My Life" featuring Nikki Jean is a GREAT song and the video captures the essence perfectly. Maybe Lupe is actually serious about the next album being his last, and wants to make sure he leaves behi...
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He's baaaack. With Common, Talib Kweli, Kanye and Lupe coming out back to back to back..., I should really be satisfied for like a year. If this song is a taste of the album, there'll be no sophmore slump here.
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I've never really been much of a hip-hop head, per se. I always enjoyed Eminem, Jay-Z, and a few other artists, but for the most part I was turned off by the glorifying of wealth (something those of us without it can get bitter about) and lack of true content. So it was only because I had a gift card to a CD shop that I purchased Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor , a hip-hop album that my friend ha...
More >
When I first heard Lupe Fiasco was planning to retire after his yet to be finished third album, I wasn’t disappointed at all.Lupe is unmistakably one of the freshest rappers around who has taken the likes of Jay-Z and Kanye West by storm and taken the ‘backpack rap’ troop to new heights.So why I am [...]
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Lupe Fiasco's song 4 The Cool. (A song 4 his friend Chill who's in jail)
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[video:http://vimeo.com/6667328 485x364]On back to back weekends The Beach at Governors Island NY was invaded with two of hip-hop's shinning stars. This past Saturday, Lupe Fiasco touched the stage. In the above clip watch as Lupe performs "Streets on Fire," off of The Cool. No new release date has been given on Lupe's upcoming 3rd LP, Lasers.Spotted at LupEND
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| Title | Lyrics | Buy |
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| 1 Baba Says Cool for Thought |
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| 2 Free Chilly |
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| 3 Go Go Gadget Flow |
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| 4 The Coolest |
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| 5 Superstar |
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| 6 Paris, Tokyo |
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| 7 Hi-Definition |
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| 8 Gold Watch |
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| 9 Hip-Hop Saved My Life |
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| 10 Intruder Alert |
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| 11 Streets on Fire |
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| 12 Little Weapon |
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| 13 Gotta Eat |
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| 14 Dumb It Down |
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| 15 Hello/Goodbye (Uncool) |
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| 16 The Die |
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| 17 Put You on Game |
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| 18 Fighters |
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| 19 Go Baby |
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| 20 [CD-Rom Track] |
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Click to purchase…
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 "The Cool")
