Review Summary: At first I had patience...
But then that patience turned to waiting...
And then that waitin’ turned to wasting my time, my time, my time...
On his 2007 track “Dumb it Down” Lupe discussed his annoyance with being forced by fans and record executives to simplify his lyricism. That was about a decade ago. In the meantime, not only has Lupe not dumbed-down his lyrics, he has smartened them up. Yet sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. His ridiculously complex lyricism somehow both hurts and benefits his music on his new 2015 LP
Tetsuo and Youth, being at once intriguing and exhausting.
“Mural” is a mind-blowing opening track. According to Lupe in an interview with MTV’s Sway, the first sixteen bars were written, the proceeding bars were essentially freestyle. The beat is a simplistic piano loop and sporadic sampling, but a great backdrop to one of Lupe’s most outstanding raps to date. Lupe plays with obscure references and double/triple-entendres while creating imagery-filled short stories, all with impeccable rhythm and flow. The album then takes a complete 180 and features complex production and r&b hooks. Lupe’s overall musicianship has greatly improved, using all types of sounds from classical to new age, the only problem he has is selecting featured artists that match his unique style.
The listener that had patience in the start of the album finds themselves waiting for some more classic-style boom bap raps like "Mural", only to find they were just wasting their time, their time, their time... The next closest thing a boom bap rap fan will find is “Chopper”, a literal mistake. Lupe sent a 32-bar beat to the five featured artists on the tracks and didn’t specify how long they should record their verses. As a result you have six 32-bar verses, by accident, on an album that was already too long. “Deliver” and “They.Ressurect.Over.New.” are clever concept and tribute songs, respectively, but the rest of the album, although highly skilled, lacks playback value for listeners concerned with segregating R & B/pop and hip hop. However, a listener who could tolerate the singing on, say, Big Boi’s
Sir Lucious LeftFoot, this album will have few, if any, flaws.
Lupe says “*** being a hip hop purist” on the track “Chopper”, but also symbolically with this album. He seems to be on a mission to go as far away from boom bap as he could, while still proving he could succeed in that format on “Mural”. Some listeners will find this to be a fitting evolution of rap, but others will see it as an unnecessary and annoying appeal to mainstream audiences.
