Hop Hop Week- Monday: Food and Liquor

Hip Hop Week I promised, and Hip Hop Week you shall have.
[First annual Hop Hop Week sponsored in part by urbandictionary.com*]

Artist: Lupe Fiasco
Album: Food and Liquor

If you don't know Lupe, you might at least remember him featured on Kanye West's "Touch The Sky" (from 'Late Registration'). We all know Kanye's got the reputation of being a little bit of a spotlight hog anyway (especially these days... you know what I'm talking about) and this consequently wasn't a real memorable collabo, as far as top-40 hip hop is concerned... But make no mistake, when Lupe does his own thing, he holds his own. In fact, while we're on the subject of Kanye, "Food and Liquor" was FAR better than "Late Registration," though it got nowhere near the hype. Not to mention... I haven't seen Lupe starting any shutter-shade trends lately either (thanks, bro).
But, regardless.
The thing that gets me most about Lupe's rapping and that of his collaborators is that it has that remarkable intelligence that all hip-hop should have (check out Jay-Z's 19th century English literary reference on "Pressure"[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bulwer-Lytton,_1st_Baron_Lytton; I admit, I Googled]), weaving street balladry, the tried-and-true "I'll do whatever it takes to make it and get out of this hood 'cause I'm better than this" sentiment, and a jaded, critical view of one's surroundings and associates: basically everything good about urban-poetic style since the Harlem Renaissance. The album is very poetry-oriented, but still edgy: Lupe finds an impossibly perfect balance on that deadly see-saw of art and style that draws the line between popularity and obscurity. For example, the slam-poetry intro to the album's first track (performed by an uncredited female poet) creates an unusual vibe on which to begin an album-- hardened, sober and socially conscious-- before giving way to an intense, intriguing backbeat, to an effect that basically says, "Yeah. I just blew your mind. But stick around... You bet your ass there's more." Pretty unique when juxtaposed against the shallow, party- and sex-obsessed hip hop dominating the charts today. Don't get me wrong, I try not to be the "this is good, and therefore should be popular" guy, or even the "I like this, therefore it's good" guy-- I'm just saying, there are risks taken with this album that I not only enjoy, but truly admire.
Subject-matter-wise, this album has something of a theme or uniformity; arguments could be made that the album is concept-esque, if not actually a concept album, in that it tells tales of life on the streets of Chicago from varied perspectives... Think of it kind of as a "Canterbury Tales" from the ghetto: from the kitschy illegal-skater anthem "Kick, Push" (and its darker sequel, "Kick, Push II"), about the life of a sk8r and his lady, to the climactic "Hurts Me Soul," on which Lupe raps from the perspective of a man who hip-hop made a misogynist ("Forgive my favorite word for hers and hers alike/But I learnt it from a song I heard and sorta liked") as well as a prostitute ("My mom can't feed me, my boyfriend beats me/I have sex for money, the hood don't love me/ The cops wanna kill me, this nonsense built me/ And I got no place to go") and a down-and-out father ("They took my daughter, we ain't got no water/ I can't get hired, they cross on fire"). However, it certainly isn't completely character-oriented; Lupe vacillates between the "rapper" facade ("All they want is some shoes or some rims for they bubble/ Now that I got my own, I can hit them with a couple") and something that resembles genuine humility ("Struggle, yeah yeah, another sign that God love you/ 'Cause on the low, bein po', make you humble")... Although he does keep it pretty real on the over-12-minute "Outro," giving shoutouts to everyone from BET and Myspace to his brother Ian to some lucky gal named Cookie.
But anyway. I don't care who you are, how old you are, what music you're into, find a way to get this album. Just trust me. Fluent, deep, pure hip-hop with shimmering little specks of indie (the non-instrumental "The Instrumental"), Latin ("American Terrorist") and old-school soul ("He Say She Say") intertwine and tesselate into this amazing mosaic of voices and music; and people are still listening to Kanye?
This has so many lyrics in it I think I might need some MLA citations or something. You guys down with in-text parenthetical citations?
-thejunkie

*We're starting a new tradition: Each Hip Hop Week post will feature an entry from urbandictionary.com. Today, Monday, Oct 19, 2009:

"1. swagger surfin (v): when you go around looking for someone elses, syle, flow, lyrics, ideas and then try to pass them off as your own.
I saw a guy at the club swagger surfin. once he found a guy he swagger jacked him [see 'swagger jack']"