For high-minded hiphop fans still reeling from Lupe Fiasco’s
bungled A Tribe Called Quest tribute at the VH1 Hip Hop Honors, you can
let him know at a meet and greet at the downtown Jackpot Records today
before he hits the Roseland Theater for an all-ages show. Fiasco, who’s
skating through town to kick off his North American tour, will likely
snap right back. He’s unflinching, whether condemning gangster
posturing on his new album, The Cool, or denying Native Tongue
lineage in the fallout from the VH1 debacle.
The damage was negligible. For all Fiasco’s aggrievement and blogger
self-righteousness, to many Lupe Fiasco is still hiphop’s beacon. The
kid, a hiphop ascetic who reportedly eschews groupies and alcohol in
his personal life—which matches their absence in his
videos—is also a begrudged backpacker. Slight, bespectacled, and
brainy, Fiasco fits the definition. Whether he cut his teeth listening
to 8Ball & MJG or Q-Tip & Co., his protests will not unburden
him from the hard bigotry of the high expectations its stamp
guarantees. Fiasco’s smart-rapper predecessors, like once-boho idol
Q-Tip, whose “Vivrant Thing” ignited the copious thick-chick video era,
or Common, whose “A Film Called (Pimp)” undid his pro-woman stance from
“The Light,” or even black nationalist lyricist Mos Def, whose love
life was so famously integrated, all strayed from the path, and because
of that they’ve endured a good deal of wrath. But unlike many smart
rappers past, the breadth of interest in Fiasco’s musical vision has
helped dull the purists’ complaints.
The Cool attempts in 19 tracks what the late Chicago poet
Gwendolyn Brooks achieved in eight lines, just 24 words, in her classic
poem “We Real Cool.” The nihilism governing young, poor black men’s
lives that she distilled, Fiasco elaborates in cadences borrowed from
Twista and Jay-Z, among other rap notables.
Fiasco performed the concept album’s first single, “Superstar,” on
David Letterman’sreturning broadcast after a protracted Writers Guild
strike caused a break. He circled his awkward and powerful-piped hook
man, Matthew Santos, bounding to the edges of the stage and pirouetting
back. If the song is not self-referential, you can read it as such.
Fiasco recounted three vignettes of buckling stardom, and Santos
responded with the bracing chorus, “If you are what you say you are, a
superstar, then have no fear….” It might be the mantra that Fiasco
repeats in the mirror, Stuart Smalley style, to preserve his swagger.
It might be his internal imperative to go at his critics. However read,
Fiasco’s the rising star straddling the salient and the profane like
Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, with whom he recently formed the
supergroup Child Rebel Soldier. Of course, Fiasco’s not a superstar
yet, but a rap technician with a message, critical cachet, peer
respect, and a wide-open, modern-rock-flavored sound. He’s got the
cards, if properly played, to join West and Williams’ ranks.