Lupe Fiasco - Food & Liquor

An album of good musical consistency and creative storytelling, Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor gives the Midwest a new rapper to brag about. - by Louie Michaud

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This year I’ve been caught up in the music of many familiar hip hop faces—DJ Shadow, Ghostface Killah, and Outkast to name a few. But with all this hype over the solo debut of Lupe Fiasco, a Chicago MC who spit a verse on Kanye West’s Late Registration, I was hoping that Food & Liquor would get me into a new face on the hip hop scene. People have been telling me that there’s been a ton of expectation for this guy—apparently Chi-town rappers need to fill Kanye’s shoes before anyone else. To make things worse, a stripped down versionof Food & Liquor was leaked before the official release last month. The bad news then is that Lupe sorta got screwed in giving his audience an unbiased listen to his debut; however the good news is that for some reason I didn’t know any of this.

I’ve had this album going in my room for the past few weeks, and here’s my one word description for it: solid. A friend of mine said that Lupe Fiasco is a “breath of fresh air,”—I’m gonna have to agree with that. He is a really good storyteller; songs like “Kick, Push” bring that out. His smooth, controlled flow is something to watch out for in the future as well. All of this comes together, in my opinion, on the song “Hurt Me Soul.” Even though the song might not reach single-status, it is easily the highlight of the album for me—a truly memorable beat filled with some really thought out verses. I’ll hold my official claims for the end of the year, but if I make some lists for you guys around late December, expect “Hurt Me Soul” to be way up there.

When an MC can control a song, and not the other way around, there is a lot more room for new and different music. I make that last point because Food & Liquor does have a flaw or two. The music is definitely interesting, there is no doubt to that (check out the song “I Gotcha, produced by the Neptunes). However it does become a bit repetitive at times, it falls off a bit at the end (especially with the Kanye-influenced 12 minute shoutout track “Outro”), and there is no real distinctness in the music—no more than one track really blows me away beat-wise.

You could say that the repetition in the music is not a bad thing, that it just shows how solid of an album Food & Liquor actually is. And while I agree, it is a solid debut by a creative mc with much potential, nevertheless this is no Black on Both Sides or any other album where the music is distinct from song to song, yet simultaneously consistent. Lupe Fiasco has done his job to keep hip hop solid, and luckily for all of us he has room for improvement.