Album Details

• Artist: Lupe Fiasco
• Album: Lasers
• Label: Atlantic
• Year of Release: 2011
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: MusicCritic on 2011-03-22

Lupe Fiasco is an artist best taken in short bursts. As a rapper, he operates with speed and wit, and the topics he explores at least offer a respite from radio-rap. But try to consume a whole album at once – like his new one, LASERS – and his flaws start to become apparent. For starters, LASERS is a tragically one-note enterprise. Lupe raps ad nauseum about his disappointment in the world at large, giving the same weight to everything from escalating international wars to state-run radio. But his verbal dexterity is enough to overcome that.

The real problem with LASERS is Lupe’s unbelievably poor choice in beats, and the halfhearted hooks that accompany them. Nearly every song on the album is paired with an overwrought, momentum-shattering chorus. Especially bad is ‘The Show Goes On,’ which bites the melody from Modest Mouse’s ‘Float On’ and does nothing with the original’s subversive optimism.

Break any four or five of these songs out into an EP, and LASERS would probably have a totally different feeling. But it’s a slog to get to the end of these 12 songs the way they’re set out.

Nathan Atnikov

User Reviews and Comments