By Dalal Museitef |Asst. Features Editor|
Lupe Fiasco returns as anything less than a fiasco to CSUSB ears.
Fiasco reels his listeners through the artistic loops of his latest album Tetsuo and Youth.
The Chicago blood artist, Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, featured on rapper Kanye West’s track, “Touch the Sky”, and who boasted his start to become his own name.
His fame then launched from having three Grammy nominations in 2006, one including Best Rap Album for Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor to being voted by GQ magazine as the Breakout Man of the Year.
Fiasco’s unstoppable track to success led him to release his second studio album called Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool, which featured hit songs like “Superstar” and “Paris Tokyo.”
Third year CSUSB student, Saeed Villanueva, voted the artist’s first two albums as two of his greatest albums.
In 2010, Fiasco disclosed information that his record label is withholding the release date for his third upcoming album, Lasers.
Multiple meetings later, the record finally released, but Fiasco still had a lack of satisfaction.
“I listen to it and I’ll like some of the songs but when I think about what it took to actually get the record together and everything that I went through on this record…I hate this album,” said Fiasco in an interview by Complex Magazine.
In early 2012, Fiasco released a mixtape called, Friend Of The People: I Fight Evil prior to Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album, which received another nomination for Best Rap Album at the 55th Grammy Awards.
He has also performed around California including CSUSB’s Coussoulis Arena in May 2014.
For several months, talk surfaced that the record label was at a stance to release the album but during an interview with Skee TV, Fiasco stated that the label received Twitter threats from an undercover team of hackers called Anonymous.
Anonymous tweeted that they had less than 24 hours to set a release date or, “If you do not comply we will launch a direct attack against your website, your associates, and your executives.”
After a domino effect of obstacles, Fiasco won his battle with his label for almost two years, which had him going through extreme frustration.
Tetsuo and Youth finally dropped on Jan. 20.
Although this is the third record company that he’s been dropped from, releasing this album is a bittersweet accomplishment to Fiasco.
“Prisoner 1 & 2 ft. Ayesha Jaco”, capitalizes Lupe’s creative diversity.
Fiasco referred to his minute and a half long tracks, “Summer”, “Fall”, “Winter”, and “Spring”, as “pallet cleansers,” to refresh and prepare the audience’s mind of the upcoming track.
Student Villanueva adds on Fiasco’s structured ways, “I like the way he broke it down into seasons… ‘Winter’ was my favorite because he went to a darker and deeper level.”
His hooks were also cleverly written. For example, in “Dots & Lines”, “You look just like how I’ma be/Sacred geometry/In a line, in a line, in a line, in a line, in a line/Three angels in kind, on time, go straight, don’t sine.”
These in-depth details live between these tracks and give the album is worth the listen.
“Prisoner 1 & 2” – Lupe Fiasco
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LoeQ2WF3VI
Madonna Ft. Nikki Jean – Lupe Fiasco
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJbDKDm0QWI