Lasers – Lupe Fiasco

Year	Album	Artist	Stars	Score	Genre
2011	Lasers	Lupe Fiasco	★½	39	Hip-Hop	Pop Hip-Hop

In one of the worst efforts ever by a record label to elevate a talented artist, 2011’s Lasers — Lupe Fiasco’s third album — pairs one of hip-hops most serious, lyrically gifted and smooth artists of the late 2000s with the most commercial, poppy, lazy beats with emotionless guest vocalists thrown on the hook they could find. 

After Lupe Fiasco thrived under the quaint aesthetic of his debut Food and Liquor, and expanded his sound with booming and narratively sprawling tracks on The Cool, the overuse of in-your-face pop elements was a jarring disappointment for fans, who had waited more than a year to listen to the record after numerous release delays and non-album teaser singles (“Shining Down” and “I’m Beamin’ ” would easily be the two best songs on Lasers has they been included).  

Lupe Fiasco does still bring some great verses, clever lines and has a level of swagger that shows why he was one of the best at his craft at the time. But there’s only so much you can do to salvage the c- and d-tier beats scattered across this thing. 

Some of the record’s best sounding songs, like “Letting Go” and “Words I Never Said,” actually sound cool, but don’t adequately bring enough edge to match the political content in Lupe’s lyrics. The “Float On” sample on “The Show Goes On” creates one of the happiest, warmest, most intoxicating beats of the early 2010s (which is why it became one of Lupe’s biggest songs), but Lupe’s verses don’t really match, and he sounds like he’s almost sleepwalking through the song. It’s still good, but makes you wonder what he could have brought to the table if he was more enthusiastic about the entire project.

Beyond that though, this album’s a fucking mess. “Beautiful Lasers” has one of Lupe’s best verses of his career, but the song is trying to recapture the epic, anthemic chorus of singles like “Superstar” and “Shining Down,” which both feature Matthew Santos. Autotuned, muffled vocals by MDMA (aka Poo Bear) don’t hit as hard, and the overly sentimental second verse on the song is too on the nose to be particularly moving. That song is followed up with another MDMA track with tired electronics and synths that go nowhere as they accompany a repetitive refrain that isn’t catchy at all. 

“State Run Radio” is an abomination of a “rap rock” song, with awful MIDI guitar riffs, basic drums and an obnoxious hook by a band named SelF that I’ve never heard elsewhere and I’m assuming never amounted to much else. Somehow, the fake, building club beat and unenergetic drum loops on “Break The Chain” are only a small, incremental improvement from the previous track. Lupe honestly doesn’t sound half bad on it, using a quick, energetic flow that shows maybe he could excel on similar electronic songs if somebody had thought it through at all instead of just giving him throwaway, emotionless beat after beat. 

Tucked away at the end of the record is the album’s best track, “All Black Everything.” It’s got a great, energetic, flourishing string sample looped with a dark, backing choir vocal track, and Lupe’s in his element, tackling racism by talking about a fantasy where Black people were never slaves and always had an equitable chance at shaping the world. It’s not his most impressive metaphor or story, but it feels refreshing and authentic on a beat that better suits his narrative. 

Similarly, the closing song “Never Forget You” shows what could have been accomplished on the record if you had a legitimate vocalist like John Legend on the rest of the album’s hooks. It’s admittedly not a great song, but it’s a breath of fresh air compared to the other commercial moments. 

Look, the album isn’t the worst sounding thing in the world. The music is cleanly produced and put together, for the most part it isn’t actively annoying or loathsome to listen to, and Lupe has enough good lines and concepts here and there to partially make up for the few times when he does mail it in. But, the album doesn’t feel Lupe, and what you can feel is the wasted potential and the tension between artists and the changing music landscape.