FEATURE:
Second Spin
Lupe Fiasco - Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor
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A remarkable artist…
whose latest album, 2022’s Drill Music in Zion, ranks alongside his best, Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco hit this incredible stride and high on his debut, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor. Released on 19th September, 2006, I do think that there are many people who might not know about Lupe Fiasco or have heard his music. I feel his debut is the peak. A stunning introduction, I will bring in a few positive reviews for this innovative and hugely original Hip-Hop album. Recorded between the hugely cool-sounding studios 1st & 15th (Chicago), Record Plant (Hollywood), and Right Track (New York City), maybe a lot of people associate Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor with the stunning lead single, Kick, Push. That song took on a life of its own. Even though Lupe Fiasco is not a skater, the song describes a love story between a male and a female misfit skateboarders. There is not a lot of promotional material around the album in terms of interviews. That is a shame, as it would have been nice to get some more context and personal insight from Lupe Fiasco. What I do know is that Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor reached eight in the U.S. and thirty-one in the U.K. Kick, Push was a more successful single here than the U.S., but I think since its release in 2006, the wonderous Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor has grown in stature and reputation. Like many of the classic Hip-Hop albums, there are plenty of well-chosen and impactful samples to be found here. For example, Kick, Push contains a sample of Magtaksil Man Ikaw (Bolero Medley) by Celeste Legaspi.
I will come to a few reviews. The first, from the A.V. Club notices how one of the most important aspects of the album is how it covers new ground and pushed forward a genre slightly dogged and defined by a narrow lyrical palette. In terms of sounds and stories, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor is so different to everything that was out there at the time – and it still sounds fresh and in its own league to this day:
“Considering how long hip-hop has dominated the pop charts and popular culture, it's remarkable how little thematic ground most of it has covered. But on his eagerly anticipated debut, Lupe Fiasco boldly goes where few, if any, rappers have gone before. On the album's best tracks, Fiasco masterfully melds his peerless storytelling gifts with his idiosyncratic passion for skateboarding, fantasy, and incisive sociopolitical commentary.
Fiasco's deafening buzz began after his attention-grabbing verse on Kanye West's "Touch The Sky," but kicked into high gear with the release of "Kick, Push." Only surpassed by Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" for this summer's dominant single, "Kick, Push" is a propulsive love song equally enraptured by the freedom, exhilaration, and outlaw allure of skateboarding culture—in it, a simpatico skater girl takes the kicking, pushing hero from skater boy to skater man. With its cinematic horns and manic drums, "Kick, Push" soars deliriously on a wave of teen romanticism seldom explored in hip-hop: It's like Rebel Without A Cause reconceived as a skateboarding anthem. Stylistically, Fiasco's flow, fussy pronunciation, and wordplay owe a sizable debt to Jay-Z, who executive produces and guests on "Pressure." But thematically and lyrically, there is no father to Fiasco's style”.
The magnificent Fiasco released one of the best debut albums of the first decade of this century. Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor is a staggering album that I would recommend to everyone – even if you are not normally a fan of Hip-Hop. Rolling Stone had their say about a sensational and eclectic album:
“For many fans, the first sign that Chicago MC Lupe Fiasco's long-delayed debut album might be something special was the single "Kick, Push." Over smooth, jazzy horn samples, Fiasco tells the story of a kid learning to ride a skateboard as a metaphor for struggling to find one's way in life and love ("He said, 'I would marry you/But I'm engaged to these aerials and varials/And I don't think this board is strong enough to carry two' "). It's a creative, well-told tale that Pharrell wishes he could have written, and it sets expectations high.
Lupe exceeds them on Food & Liquor. Without dipping his toes into violent imagery, wanton obscenity or other hip-hop cliches, Fiasco reflects on the personal and the political, and reminds fans of everything hip-hop can be. It's full of surprising, creative moments that recall Nas and Kanye West -- the latter of whom gave Fiasco his biggest exposure as a guest on "Touch the Sky" and who produced one track here. "He Say She Say" details the woes of growing up without a father ("Asks me if his daddy was sick of us/'Cause you ain't never pick him up"), set to swelling strings, and "Hurt Me Soul" describes the Muslim MC's struggle to come to terms with hip-hop's darker side ("I used to hate hip-hop, yup, because of the women degraded/But Too $hort made me laugh, like a hypocrite I played it"). "Pressure" features a killer beat populated by stabbing piano, guitar and hawk squawks, plus a golden cameo from Jay-Z, who, amazingly, crossed label lines to executive-produce the project -- an indication of how strongly Jigga feels about the kid. His faith is well-placed”.
I am going to round things off with a review from AllMusic. There is no denying the brilliance and creativity that runs right through Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor. Like other albums released from 2006, I don’t think that it is dated and only relevant at the time it came out. Here is an album that still offers up layers and joys after seventeen years:
“A few years in the making, Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor follows a fruitless association with Epic (as a member of da Pak), an aborted solo deal with Arista (which yielded one promo single), a handful of guest appearances (tha Rayne's "Kiss Me," Kanye West's "Touch the Sky"), and a leak of an unfinished version of the album that set the official release back to September 2006. Still only 25 years old, Fiasco -- a Chicagoan of Islamic faith who owns a number of black belts -- sounds wise beyond his age, rarely raises his voice, projects different emotions with slight inflections, and is confident enough to openly admit his inspirations while building on them. It Was Written is his touchstone, and there are traces of numerous MCs in his rhymes, from Intelligent Hoodlum and Ed O.G. to Nas and Jay-Z. Pharrell (aka Skate Board P) might've considered suffocating himself out of envy with his Bathing Ape sweatshirt when he first heard the album's lead single, "Kick, Push," dubbed a skate-rap classic well before Food and Liquor hit shelves. Like nothing else in the mainstream or underground, its subject matter -- skater boy meets skater girl -- and appealing early-'90s throwback production finally broke the doors down for Fiasco's solo career. Wisely enough, Fiasco doesn't turn the skating thing into a gimmick and excels at spinning varying narratives over a mostly strong set of productions from 1st & 15th affiliates Soundtrakk and Prolyfic, as well as the Neptunes, West, Needlz, and Mike Shinoda. There are strings, smeary synthesized textures, and dramatic keyboard vamps galore -- templates that befit heartbreaking tales like "He Say She Say" and casually deep-thinking reflections like "Hurt Me Soul," where the MC confronts some of his conflicting emotions: "I had a ghetto boy boppa/Jay-Z boycott/'Cause he said that he never prayed to God, he prayed to Gotti/I'm thinking golly, God, guard me from the ungodly/But by my 30th watchin' of Streets Is Watching, I was back to givin' props again/And that was botherin'/'Bout as comfortable as a untouchable touching you." Deserving of as much consideration as the other high-profile debuts of the past few years, up to and including The College Dropout, Food and Liquor just might be the steadiest and most compelling rap album of 2006”.
Go and listen to Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor if you have not heard it before. It is a wonderful album that I have been spinning again in preparation for this feature. It got acclaim when it came out, but I don’t think many people explore it now. Maybe I am wrong. With Lupe Fiasco still releasing music, his incredible career…
KEEPS going strong.