Music Review of Lupe Fiasco's the Cool Album

Every now & then an artist comes along in the culture of Hip-Hop who helps to re-define the thought process of how artist and other MC's in the game think, write and recite their lyrics! Rakim did it in the mid to late 80's! The Native Tongue Family (in particular A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul) did this in the early to mid 90's and Jay-Z & Nas did it throughout the 90's! Well for the new millennium Lupe Fiasco seems to be that dude for the next generation!

Lupe Fiasco's The Cool album, like in the tradition of the Native Tongue family before him, shows young Lu rocking to a beat of his own drum. He has his own style, slang terminology and swagger with a creative flair that dares to be unique. And Lupe doesn't seem to care if others consider him to be a bit strange or different from the norm because he chooses not to talk about disrespecting women or tell tall gangster tales of selling drugs and killing his competition through violent means! No track displays this proud and triumphant different stance from the status quo than Lupe's first single off his sophomore album than "Dumb it Down"!

With a banging rock flavored sound, Lupe takes on his critics head on who claim he needs to dumb down his lyrics in order to appeal to a wider and more universally appealing audience, especially women! As part of the chorus boasts: "You goin over Niggas heads Lu, Dumb it Down, they telling me that they don't feel you, Dumb it Down, we ain't graduate from school nigga, Dumb it Down, them big words ain't cool nigga, Dumb it Down"! Every verse, lyric and syllable in the rhyme is a metaphorical display of lyrical superiority that he flexes effortlessly, to shame those who seem to believe that intelligence is a sign of weakness or an inferior musical product.