What is The Cool, really, Lupe? It's hard to come to grips with this kid post-Fiascogate, especially when you take his comments in defense of himself and then look at "Dumb It Down" with its satirizing of id and industry pressure; so you didn't listen to conscious rap, Lu? Then Lupe jolts us across the spectrum to "Superstar" with its lush strings and crooning Matthew Santos (posing in the Hype Williams video like the Phantom with a smile like the Joker and a voice like Adam Levine). Acerbic opposition, "Dumb It Down" was all no budget synths mimicking big budget synths used cheaply; winsome attrition, "Superstar" sounds like no budget simulation of an expensive symphony used simply, pomp and circumstance congealing into a pleasing wash over the drums and under Lupe's rhyming. And the rhyming's still interesting, still the most important part of a Lupe song. He's a rapper that you have to give the benefit of the doubt or his schemes become gimmicks and his wordplay has little meaning outside of its own seemingly short-sighted ends. But give him that benefit and instead of hearing Lupe cash in a pun off Billie Holiday's last name, you hear him asking for a girl like Holiday rather than the arm candy he mentions earlier; instead of hearing one-run cadence stresses, you find a song where Lupe ups the ante with the ploy on each verse. You hear an artist dreaming of being "cool," and maybe not quite succeeding, but making something artful in the process.

permanent link ::