This is probably the only hip-hop album I'll ever review

Lupe Fiasco - Lasers

Disappointment. That's pretty much the best way to summarize my feelings of this album. I remember when I heard Lupe for the first time. I was shocked to hear rap through a mainstream source with someone who could actually carry a beat. Not only that, but he was rapping about ACTUAL stuff, not going to the club/fucking bitches/other stereotypes.

So yeah. Anyone familiar with Lupe knows that Food and Liquor and The Cool are DAMN good albums. The same cannot be said for Lasers, unfortunately.

The first track starts off with an autotuned hook. As soon as I heard this, my hopes dropped a bit. I absolutely despise autotuning. The only times it works, for me, are certain kinds of techno and T-Pain. But I listened on anyway.

For the majority of the album, Lupe just doesn't seem into it at all. One thing I really liked about prior albums was the passion I could sense in that he really cared what he was rapping about. Here, its not the case. He also just comes on really strongly with some of his ideas. Namely political ones. In "Words I Never Said" he makes a lot of references to the Middle East. That would have been more appropriate four years ago. He attempts what I'm going to assume is irony in this song, in that it's called "Words I Never Said" but the lyrics juxtapose this with "Words I Should Have Said." It's a mix of coming on way too strong with his opinion and trying to say what he thinks people want to hear.

I also noticed a few instances where he pretty much rips off other songs. I know it can be popular to sample songs in hip hop, but this definitely wasn't the case. In "Don't Wanna Care" part of the beat sounds pretty damn identical to "Down" by Jay Sean. In "Show Goes On" he BLATANTLY rips off Modest Mouse's "Float On." Hey look at that, the titles are even similar.

Lupe reminds us just how liberal he really is with "All Black Everything" again just saying what people would want to hear. Mind you, I am an independent, but it just annoys me to hear over the top anti-war/other stereotypical things in music. Politics and music can definitely work, there are PLENTY of good anti-war songs. But there's a thing called subtlety. If you're over the top, it's going to be annoying and just not work.

There were a couple good songs though. "Coming Up" was really good, it was probably the first song on the album I genuinely enjoyed. "Never Forget" was a great song, really the only one that struck me as classic Lupe. John Legend did some guest vocals on that song and at first I thought it was Russel Brand. For a moment I thought the album had ended and a song from Get Him to the Greek had come on. Still good though, I was able to tell the difference after a moment. That's not meant to be criticism at all, it just made me laugh so I figured I would share.

Anyway, all in all, the albums mediocre at best. I want to give it a second listen to try again, but I honestly do not see it as a keeper. Lupe's fame has gone to his head. I've known this for a while. It's a shame and hopefully he'll bounce back to his old self, but the album just wasn't that good. It wasn't terrible by any means, but I guess I just expected a lot more. I was quite excited for this album and currently I feel pretty let down.

But still, here's a link, judge for yourself.

http://fileserve.com/file/3JyHyXZ/Lupe_Fiasco-Lasers-2011-H3X.rar