Lupe Fiasco - Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album, Pt. 1 (Deluxe Version) (Album) [iTunes Plus AAC M4A/M4V]

Genres: Hip-Hop/Rap, Music, Alternative Rap, Rap
Released: Aug 01, 2012

Lupe Fiasco - Lasers (Deluxe Version) (Album) [iTunes Plus AAC M4A/M4V]

Genres: Hip-Hop/Rap, Music
Released: Mar 04, 2011

Back in the mid-'00s, Lupe Fiasco struck a nerve with his fashion-forward style, matched with cheeky verses and ear-tickling, loop-driven productions, which endeared him to fans and critics alike. Lasers (an acronym for Love Always Shines Everytime Remember 2 Smile) marks his 2011 return. Straight off the bat, it's clear that Lupe has no intentions keeping his original, underground-centric fan base, as he employs a lot more singing, radio-ready choruses, and a heavy, electro-pop influence on his tracks. The best joints here are the string-laced, Afro-centric anthem "All Black Everything," ridiculously catchy "Coming Up" featuring MDMA, and "Words I Never Said" with Skylar Grey. Other guests include John Legend, Trey Songz, and Matt Mahaffey.

Lupe Fiasco - Lupe Fiasco's the Cool (Deluxe Version) (Album) [iTunes Plus AAC M4A/M4V]

Genres: Hip-Hop/Rap, Music, Hip-Hop, Alternative Rap
Released: Jan 01, 2007

Developing in tandem with his Chi-Town mentor Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco’s sophomore effort is a far grander than his debut. “The Coolest,” “Little Weapon,” “Hello Goodbye,” and “The Die” are chock full of sound and syllable, buoyed by the same enormous, inflatable synths as Kanye’s Graduation. However, some of the best moments on The Cool hearken back to the nimble mischief of A Tribe Called Quest; “Paris, Tokyo” is Lupe’s holler-back to Tribe’s classic “Award Tour,” while “Gold Watch,” with its tricky beat and trickier rhymes, might be the album’s best song. As his music grows beyond the simple nostalgia of his 2006 hit “Kick, Push,” Lupe weaves what are easily mainstream rap’s most ambitious verses. “Dumb It Down” is a portfolio of exploratory rhyme styles: “I'm not a listener or a seer so my windshield smear / Here you steer, I really shouldn't be behind this / Clearly cause my blindness / The windshield is min-strel / The whole grill is roadkill / So trill and so sincere / Yeah, I'm both them there.” While songs like “Put You On Game” become too grandiloquent for their own good, there are dozens of verses on The Cool that are as complex and challenging as anything a Grammy-nominated rapper has ventured.

Lupe Fiasco - Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor (5th Anniversary Edition) (Album) [iTunes Plus AAC M4A/M4V]

Genres: Hip-Hop/Rap, Music, Rap, Alternative Rap
Released: Jun 27, 2006

Don’t be fooled by the goofy retro futurism of the album cover, which shoots for a Bambaataa aping electro cool but winds up looking more like a Gap ad gone horribly awry, Lupe Fiasco is neither a po-faced classicist nor a Beans inspired ‘80s revisionist. Instead, Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor provides an album's worth of grandiose, soul steeped beats and skillfully elliptical lyrical virtuosity. Those looking for more of the breathless, Escobar inspired flow that won Fiasco a key spot on Kanye’s storming “Touch the Sky” will not be disappointed. And though Fiasco occasionally reverts to awkward platitudes, for the most part he remains as lyrically inventive as he is technically gifted. Fiasco is equally capable of delivering incisive political observations (“American Terrorist”) and scabrous commentary on the state of the Hip-Hop nation, but Lupe is at his best when spitting boy’s eye view coming of age narratives that blend the expansive ambitions of adolescence with the gritty texture of everyday life.