The audaciousness of Lupe Fiasco’s art has never been in question, nor has his ability to string rhymes together. He repeatedly tinkered with his solid debut record, Food & Liquor, after untimely and unfinished Internet leaks forced him to decry the existence of the world wide web. Then Lupe ventured into concept album territory with his follow-up effort, The Cool, quicker than any rap artist in the music’s history. With the release of The Cool also came an announcement about the Chicago MC’s impending retirement once his third album hit the streets. He wanted to retire because he’d have done all he could within music’s boundaries. Then he declared that his final album, LupEND, wouldn’t fit on a single disc, that it would need three CDs to be complete. And now, Lupe has donned a wincingly bad British accent under the name Percival Fats in a Joy Division inspired band called Japanese Cartoon.
Unlike that other Chicago rapper (in)famous for his audacity and refusal to color within the lines, it doesn’t feel like Lupe actually believes in what he’s doing. While Kanye West can confuse critics and fans by singing like a robot for an entire album, no one questioned how real the experiment of 808s & Heartbreak was to the artist himself. He wore his heart on his Autotuned sleeve, but Lupe has always hidden behind his gimmicks.
My problem with The Cool was that I just didn’t believe him. He was decrying an industry of fake rappers and lauding his own attempt at high art…all the while sounding like a fake artist. Damn it, he really is a skilled rapper. And yeah, hip-hop is full of phonies. (One of 2008’s biggest scandals when Rick Ross, an MC who raps almost exclusively about his coke dealing past, actually worked as a correctional officer for several years.) In interviews and on the mic, Lupe can’t say enough about the voids in hip-hop…yet it always seems as if critique is his only offering to fix them.
The first sentence of Lupe’s MySpace-posted biography reads: “Hip-hop music, once a platform for creative expression and friendly competition, has, sadly, become a popularity contest.” He’s certainly not wholly wrong, but more and more he’s trying to be popular by dissing the popularity contest’s front runners. No one knows the seriousness or future of Japanese Cartoon and while the first two leaked songs (”Army” and “Heirplanes”) aren’t laughably bad, the latter has a raw if simple guitar riff, the rock band side project is indicative of Lupe’s penchant to be mysterious and weird for the sake of mystery and weirdness. Once again, he’s hiding behind an accent, hiding behind a gimmick, hiding behind audacity in the authenticity. It’s hardly real.
Download “Army” and “Heirplanes” via Fake Shore Drive
** UPDATE **
Lupe is on okayplayer saying that Percival isn’t him at all, but some guy named Chris. He’s also denying that Chris is an alter-ego for his alter-ego Percival. Time shall tell. He’s promising a video in the coming weeks that proves this.
Related Reads
CD Review: Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool
Videos from The Cool
Lupe’s New Years Resolution
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