The Asian Lupe Fiasco

Despite having finals looming in just a matter of days, I've been doing anything but studying. Mostly I've been surfing the net and listening to music, which really means that I've just been doing what I usually do.

One of the albums that has come back into heavy rotation is Lupe Fiasco's The Cool. I was intrigued by Lupe the first time I heard him (Kick, Push), and I was impressed when I copped his first album Food and Liquor last year. However I only became a convert when Lupe dropped his sophmore effort, The Cool. It ranks as one of those albums in my mind that stands out in my memory when I cast my mind back to all the records I've heard (which are a fair few).

To me, The Cool represented the very epitome of what I want to do with my own music: uncompromisingly intelligent, edgy, contemplative music that is underscored with humanity. I like to think that I don't easily match up with any rapper, but if I had to pick any emcee I'd want to be compared with it'd have to be Lu.

When I first heard The Cool I was spellbound - I listened to the whole thing in one sitting and was blown away by the quality of the music and the sheer breadth of Lupe's opus. I knew that I had a classic in my hands. Yet when I loaded it up on my portable MP3 player (my Nokia) and took it out with me on the road, I was hit by the realisation that I couldn't find any 'standout' songs to really get into. This was astounding, seeing as I had just listened to an album that I was absolutely convinced was a certified hit.

By way of explanation, what normally happens when I listen to a great album is that I enjoy it in the first sitting, and then over the next couple of listens I sift out songs that I enjoy more than the others and put those specific tracks into heavy rotation. Yet with Lupe's work somehow it was impossible to find any standout track, even though I hadn't found an ounce of fluff on the album the first time I listened to it.

A lot of contemplation ensued, and I finally realised why it was that I couldn't find any individual tracks to really get into. It wasn't because the music was too dense - I had followed the flow effortlessly the first time round. It also wasn't because the whole album was one long concept album; the songs are connected, but not interdependent. The real reason why I couldn't parse the tracks was because they weren't easily pigeonholed.

Subconsciously the way that I pick out 'standout' tracks is by assigning a particular emotion, vibe or meaning to the given song; for example the reason I like the track Mockingbird by Eminem is because it reinforces my own strong sense of the importance of family. That is the concept that Mockingbird stands for in my mind. Yet with Lupe I've found it impossible to break his work down like this.

At first I thought it might have been because he was too cerebral, but upon closer inspection I realised that nothing that Lupe says is esoteric or beyond the realm of common experience. This point is reinforced by the fact that I've been able to crunch works much more 'intellectual' than Lupe's (such as Canibus' Rip the Jacker, which is another one of my 'landmark' albums). Canibus moves from history to art to science in the space of four bars, and yet I've never had a problem with his music.

The real reason that I haven't been able to pigeonhole Lupe's music is because it is truly intellectual music - its true value can only be unlocked on a cerebral level. Lupe is an intellectual naturally, as opposed to the superficially deep (oxymoronic, I know) name-checking hip hop that normally gets passed off as 'intellectual'. And because I interact with Lupe's music on an intellectual (that is, conscious) level, I'm not easily able to subconsciously assign simple metalabels to his songs.

And to be honest, that's the sort of music I want to make as well. When you're listening to it, you connect with it on a deep level and it draws you in. Yet if you're trying to play it in the background and assign it to the role of 'mood music' it refuses. Music that stands on its own as a work of art, which is more than just a quick piece of entertainment.

For a while I wondered whether it was even possible to make truly intelligent hip hop. Lupe gives me hope that someday hip hop will be able to transcend the haphazard 'stream of consciousness' format that it was born out of and move to the next level of artistry.

And if I get to end up known as the Asian Lupe Fiasco? Well, I'd be alright with that.