The Cool

Wondering around labels

Artist Lupe Fiasco became prominent due to his 2006 collaboration with Kanye West Touch The Sky and the debut album Food & Liquor. However, not many people know that all this was forewent by a five year old hard struggle for the place under the hip-hop sun. As it often happens, the young Chicago rapper joined the collective of liked-minded persons. They singed to the Epic Records and even managed to release a single before splitting. After that Fiasco decided to cooperate with the Arista Records, which refused from working with him after the head stuff changed. The rapper started collaborating with his rap colleagues, featuring on their tracks and distributing his material through the Internet. On the whole, Lupe managed to recommend himself in rap circles by the moment he stroke the audience with the appearance on Touch The Sky. After it the Atlantic Records took care of him, feeling the potential of the performer. Partnership with Fiasco presented the label with a gifted vice-president of their minor recording studio 1 & 15 Entertainment, which released the second full-length The Cool by this promising author in 2007. Citing Lupe, the disc is the conceptual continuation to the themes he explored in his highly appraised debut.

The Cool: worthy continuation of the debut album

The cooperation with Kanye West – this hip-hop reform activist, should tell much itself for Lupe Fiasco. Firstly, it shows his readiness for experiments, including musical ones, thinks in an unordinary way and can attract the attention of the audience. The example is the masterful and teasing ignition of this attention to his first release. The Cool became the new incarnation of everything that the listeners liked so much in Lupe Fiasco. The main topic of this edition is the criminal life – gangsters are the central issue of at least four songs - Streets On Fire, Fighters, Little Weapon, the piercing story about children with arms in hands and the connection between violence in computer games and in life, and Free Chilly, the manifest of letting Fiasco's friend free from the prison. Witty, full on indignation social critics by the artist will leave no one cool-blooded, while the compositions themselves thematically remind us about the roots of hip-hop movement. The dark and measured Hello/Goodbye(Uncool), recorded with the rockers Unkle, demonstrates Fiasco's love of rock music, bringing a pleasant diversity in the common style and beat of The Cool. However, Lupe is not absolutely serious all the time – he proves it perfectly with the jazzy Paris, Tokyo and devoted to girls though no ways less witty Go Baby Go.

Lupe Fiasco: the future of hip-hop

Some musicians say that hip-hop is dead as a genre or is going to dye in several years at least. Others oppose that hip-hop is going to survive, and one of the reasons for their being right is the creativity of such authors as Lupe Fiasco. This young performer is deservedly one of the most intelligent and brainy artists nowadays. The Cool makes it easy to persuade anyone to believe it again. After all, Fiasco's lyrics are really witty, not abstruse. Anyway, texts set him apart qualitatively from those rappers, whose songs are the enumeration of their love feats and items of luxury. Although it is worthy of stating, that The Cool is darker in moods then Food & Liquor. There is no doubt that the death of Lupe's father – who opened the hip-hop world for him -contributed to it. Moreover, the artist's father was a gifted percussionist that presented the son with an amazing rhythm feeling, engineer, karate teacher and the owner karate schools – he used all his skill and talents to take care of nine children. Having such an example, Lupe is a passionate perfection searcher himself, working hard and striving for self-improvement. Next year everyone is waiting for the follow-up to the marvelous The Cool titled LupEND, which will be the last one in the trilogy.