Lupe Fiasco: Friend of the People (2012)

(Datpiff)

!! CAUTION !!

It's true, kids, that at one point not even very long ago Lupe Fiasco had the world at his fingertips. In the mid-2000s his bright future seemed a sure thing; it's not even a bunk bit of output that's really sunk all the hope attached to Food & Liquor, it's a series of bizarre career moves, a long spate of radio silence, and an odd feeling of cheapness. The lethal combination produced the embarrassing Lasers last year, and this face-saving mixtape does little to reverse his downward spiral, which for those of us who still retain a lot of affection for his best work is a real shame.

Friend of the People features Lupe taking the mixtape format to a cheerfully obnoxious extreme that invokes John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "newspaper album," Some Time in New York City. With its instantly dated topical lyrics about Occupy Wall Street and a fucking song called "Joaquin Phoenix" (and one called "Double Burger w/ Cheese"), Friend of the People appears to be designed to enjoy a brief shelf life, and this comes through in the confoundingly half-baked music as well. Once blazing forth with armloads of beautifully produced material, he now raps over low-rent trance and electronica -- with the result that most of these songs sound like open-mike night at a shitty art gallery. The cut that samples M83 is certainly an improvement on the Modest Mouse abomination last year, but like much of this tape, it's barely discernible as a step in the right direction.

His flow is still decent enough, even if he sometimes resembles the guy in your circle who will never shut the fuck up and tends to talk over more interesting people, and he's got no shortage of talent, it just seems he's also intentionally sidestepping it to keep belaboring some tired and confused point. There are some pop smarts in evidence on the ridiculously named "WWJD He'd Probably LOL Like WTF!!!" and "Life, Death and Love from San Francisco" (maybe the best cut we've heard from this guy since The Cool, but still workmanlike) -- yet these seem to be the product of a man whose existence you can't even suss out on "Lupe Back" and the hilariously Skrillex-derived "SNDclsh in Vegas." At this point it's hard to know what to expect or even hope for from Lupe Fiasco, but his decline is one of the most confusing in recent memory -- perhaps he's really smarter than all of us and we're just missing the essence of his point. Nothing would be more delightful to believe.

[SEE ALSO:]
Lasers (2011)