Day 0966 - Food & Liquor

Lupe Fiasco "Food & Liquor" (2006)

Lupe had grown up with parents who exposed him to a range of experiences and knowledge.   This, juxtaposed with the experience of growing up in a dangerous neighbourhood helped shape his music and world-view.

After a deal with Arista records fell through, Jay Z helped Lupe land a contract with Atlantic and get started on his debut album.   Lupe explained that the title was in reference to the 'food and liquor' stores that could be found all around his neighbourhood and other similar hoods.   He stated that it represented the balance of the two sides of people.   Food was the good, but liquor (with Lupe being a Muslim) represented the evil.

While the album starts and ends in meandering fashion ("Intro" and the 12-minute long "Outro") the rest of it is interesting stuff.

"Kick Push" almost has a Dan the Automator feel with its retro cinematic swells of strings and horns, but actually backing quite a sweet story about skating romance.   It's cleverly juxtaposed later on by "Kick Push II" which focuses on the street drug trade.

"The Instrumental" starts off almost sounding like the quiet part of a nu-metal track... which is not surprising when I then see it's produced by Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park.  It does have a good groove to it though with interesting production sound, little swells of strings popping up among guitar loop and keyboard parts.

"Pressure" (feat. Jay Z) has a 70s funk and rock backing. "He Say, She Say" is glorious strings.  "I Gotcha" has a jazzy keyboard part to it.

Another of those hip-hop albums that (at 72+ minutes) could possibly have stood to lose a track or two, but other than that, I dug this.

Day 0954 - College Dropout

Kanye West “College Dropout” (2004)

Remember those days when Kanye wasn’t a Kardashian side-piece and a walking conversation-starter around the danger of not managing mental health issues.  When we hadn’t even had the “whoa that was a bit crazy” moment of him interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMAs.

Before all of that, and before Kanye even known as a rapper, he was a producer who was building a reputation for himself.  He specialised in a sound where he manipulated old soul samples and arranged beats behind them.  

West struggled to be taken seriously as a rapper and had a potential major label deal shot down before it could even happen.   He was eventually signed to Roc-a-Fella Records and set about recording his debut.

The production sounds good.  From the beats and gospel choir of “Jesus Walks” to the seamless blending of an RnB/soul vocal with West’s raps in "All Falls Down".  I can understand the reticence about signing West for his lyrics though.  He grew up the son of an English professor who, for a time relocated to China to teach there, taking Kanye with her. She helped pay for his first recording efforts.  Not the standard gangsta/street résumé often associated with the genre.  

To my mind, that life could still have thrown up some interesting stories/lyrics but instead Kanye often seems to rap about expensive possessions, lash out at those he perceives as having wronged him, and even falling back on the old standard ‘braggadocio’ track (“Breathe in, Breathe out”).

If anything, I found the most interesting, endearing and honest track to be the album-closer “Last Call” where Kanye spends 12+ minutes geeking out about his process, his history, recounting (sometimes in excruciating detail) his path to getting signed and making his record and generally just talking in a direct and honest way.   It's almost like an unannotated twitter feed.