zeegoeshere

I went outside to walk to the Trax station with my hair wet just now, and got icicles in my bangs. Hi, winter, I'm over you.

( the new Panic! song--behind a cut for squee-harshing )

Gah, okay, I was going to post a big long squeeful thing on Lupe Fiasco's The Cool here, because I dislike posting very negative opinions without something more positive to balance it out, but I've been listening to this album for three days and all I got is ♥_____♥ HOW IS LUPE SO PERFECT? It's not fair to the rest of us! I'm failing at being articulate about my love for his latest album, so here's a list of awesome things about it instead:

--the way it mixes fantastical elements with more gritty, real-world subject material. This was one of my favorite things about Food and Liquor (I mean--songs about giant robots!), too, and I'm really pleased to see Lupe expanding it even more in this. Overall, the CD seems like it could be the soundtrack to some awesome cyberpunk ghetto post-apocalyptic story, and oh man, I would read that story so hard.
--Lupe's interest in story-telling. Unlike most rappers, he doesn't seem too interested in talking about himself; you can't listen to a CD by Kanye or Jay-Z without learning a lot about their lives and who they are or claim to be, but for the most part, Lupe Fiasco doesn't really talk about his own life in his music. Even in songs that do seem to be about his own feelings on fame or his music or whatever, like Superstar and Dumb It Down, he seems to be rapping about characters. This is not to say that I don't like rappers who write more about their own experiences, but Lupe Fiasco is talented enough to pull off a much bigger scope.
--He's a philosopher. His songs are all about the whys and hows of humans and society, about what 'cool' means, about what success means, and he doesn't offer easy answers or even obvious questions; his lyrics require analysis and repeated listening.
--His excellent fucking rhymes. I mean, jesus, what can I even say? I hope your bullet holes become mouths that say my name. Who the hell can write like that?!
--The women in his songs. Lupe Fiasco uses female voices and female characters in his songs, he makes them part of the narrative. As much as I love Talib Kweli and Mos Def and their ilk, I kind of prefer Lupe's method to the hip-hop feminism that 'conscience' rappers endorse in songs like Brown Skin Lady and Black Girl Pain--as opposed to taking time out from the main stories to talk about how awesome women are, Lupe Fiasco includes them in his stories in the first place.

And this doesn't have anything to do with the album per se, but I was talking with gigantic about how the CD album art of gangsta zombies and vampires makes me think of Lupe Fiasco in 16 Candles-verse. As vampire!Pete is to vampire!william, so vampire!Lupe is to vampire!Travis? OR perhaps Kanye West was the one who bit him. HMM.

Some tracks from the album:
Put You On Game
Hello/Goodbye
Little Weapon