Beautiful Lasers

Hip Hop fans are the most fickle fans of any genre of music ever. They’ll stop supporting a certain artist because he’s “too old.” They claim to be real supporters of certain artists, but will download an album before it even crosses his mind to purchase it. They will literally not support or listen to one artist because another artist who they like more has a “beef” with the other guy. My biggest gripe with hip hop fans is that many of them simply don’t know what they want. An artist will get criticized because he keeps talking about the same thing over and over, and has yet to change his subject matter; however when a rapper does switch his style up and become a little more diverse with his music, fans reject it because he’s changed too much. The fame went to his head and he needs to go back to “that College Dropout style.”

With that said, I’d like to speak on the recent criticism of Lupe Fiasco’s latest effort, L.A.S.E.R.S. The week leading up to its release, I went to my slew of daily hip hop blogs to read the reviews and see what commentary the fans had to say about the album. I kid you not; I hadn’t read a single favorable review in support of the album. I dig Lupe though, so I purchased it anyway. I’m not gonna say the album was as good as Food & Liquor or The Cool, but L.A.S.E.R.S was far from the Frisbee that so many people are claiming it to be. Which prompts the question, do you listen to music or do you just skim through it? No the lyrics aren’t as witty and the word play isn’t as nice as it was on the first two efforts, but in an age where everyone seems to be complaining about the lack of diversity on radio playlists, or rappers inability to speak from the heart; you would think this album would be an answer to their prayers. It would be completely foolish of me to say that the album was perfect. Far from it, it had a few missteps (especially that atrocious song with Trey Songz). Maybe some people didn’t like the electro-pop feel to some of the production. I can see that plight, yet none of the production seems to hinder what Lupe is talking about. If anything it makes it a bit more interesting (in this writers opinion). Either way, I’m glad L.A.S.E.R.S. got its release. I believe he’s fulfilled his obligations to his record label, who he’s cited as stifling his creativity, and now we can get The Great American Rap Album that we’ve been waiting for later this year.