Earlier this year we did a review of Lupe Fiasco’s entire career, along with his latest album Tetsuo & Youth, and it seems he’s been doing some dwelling too. Lupe recently posted a lengthy statement on his Facebook page in regards to his third album, 2011’s Lasers, which received mixed reviews and is often regarded as his worst album.

My 3rd musically related thing I want to accomplish this year is not to make another album but to do something waaaay…

Posted by Lupe Fiasco on Monday, 31 August 2015

While he still stands behind the album, saying that he and many fans love it (it’s still one of his highest-selling albums), the Facebook post was essentially an invitation for those fans who hated it to send him their physical copies to have them destroyed with an actual laser. He wrote that no money or apologies would be sent to fans, but that they would get to watch their CD and vinyl copies of Lasers literally get destroyed by lasers in spectacular, grand fashion on New Year’s Day 2016. It’s a bold, unique statement, and kind of refreshing to see an artist have a sense of humour about their critics, but is Lasers really so bad that it should be destroyed?

Let’s take this opportunity to revisit the Lasers, now that a few years have passed and Lupe Fiasco has a solid body of work to reflect on. When Lasers came out, the anticipation was extremely high. His first two albums, 2006’s Food & Liquor and 2007’s The Cool were arguably modern-day classics, and fans had to wait four years and even hold protests for Atlantic Records to finally release Lasers in 2011. With the strong start to his career and the long wait, we expected Lupe to have a three-peat of classic albums just like Eric B & Rakim, A Tribe Called Quest, Ice Cube, Redman, Eminem, and Kanye West all arguably did before him, but were let down when that didn’t happen. The general consensus was that the album was filled with subpar production and a more blatant, inorganic push for pop-radio play than previous albums; Lupe essentially contradicted his The Cool single “Dumb It Down.”

When you play the album from the beginning, it actually starts on a really strong note. All of Lupe’s other albums before and after Lasers have some sort of intro track, but Lasers gets right into the music, starting with “Letting Go,” which features long-time collaborator Sarah Green. The moody song is actually my favourite that these two have done together to date (while Sarah Green was featured on all of Lupe’s albums up to this point, she has not appeared on any since), as Lupe immediately vents his frustrations with Atlantic Records and the music industry. This is followed by the single “Words I Never Said,” which features a chorus by Skylar Grey before her voice got over-played, and Lupe Fiasco’s blunt critique of America and capitalism that still remains relevant to this day. Before this, Lupe had never been so in-your-face or outspoken in his music, making this arguably one of his greatest hits (if a Greatest Hits album were to be made in the future).

The album continues into a weaker portion with the next few songs. “Till I Get There” is a skip-able track today, as it comes off as an uninspired song about an uninspiring time in Lupe’s career. “I Don’t Wanna Care Right Now” was truly a WTF-moment when fans first heard it, as it was the first time we heard Lupe attempt to make a dance song for the clubs. It features the Grammy award-winning Pooh Bear (not to be mistaken with Little Brother’s Big Pooh) singing with autotune under his EDM name MDMA, and while this song could have been a club smash, it failed because it simply didn’t fit Lupe Fiasco’s brand as an artist. Still, the song does its job when included in party playlists.

Another dance track comes next with the single “Out Of My Head,” this time using the natural, non-autotuned singing of Trey Songz. This song initially worked well for RnB fans and club-goers, but like most of these types of songs, it goes stale all these years later and can easily be interchangeable with whatever RnB/rap combos they play in the clubs these days. Lupe Fiasco’s highest charting single to date, “The Show Goes On,” is what follows. Obvious commercial success aside, this song is one of Lupe’s most positive and uplifting songs, and while the lyricism is indeed “dumbed down,” the message behind it prevents me from hating on it.

Halfway through the album, we get to one of Lupe’s deepest, most introspective songs he’s ever made: “Beautiful Lasers (2 Ways).” Yes, the autotuned chorus from MDMA may ruin the track for some, but Lupe’s verses on this song make it one of his best tracks on any album (although I suppose you’d have to relate or be open to relating to mental health issues to really regard it this way). While not as metaphorical as his most critically acclaimed work, Lupe’s blunt approach on “Beautiful Lasers” still paints a vivid picture of what it’s like to deal with depression or similar conditions. The mood quickly flips to positive with the upbeat “Coming Up,” and a slightly more tolerable MDMA chorus. It’s a nice, uplifting, groovy track, but just like the Trey Songz collaboration, it gets lost in the mix of millions of other RnB/rap collaborations with a romantic dance appeal.

The following song, “State Run Radio,” is more in line with Lupe Fiasco’s style and appeal. Lupe had some radio hits on previous albums, but this song is essentially about refusing to be boxed into the generic style of music that gets played on the radio, maintaining a strong message in the lyrics, all while ironically implementing a catchy sung chorus that could easily fit into the radio standards. It’s a weird song to have on this album, since Lupe does on other songs what this song is against, but it gives fans a sign that we haven’t completely lost him to the fame. A message like this is needed, as the next song sees Lupe rapping over an EDM beat on “Break The Chain,” something that was seen as trend-hopping at the time. Whether or not the trend of EDM-rap collaborations is dead remains to be seen, but regardless, the strength of this song really depends on how much the listener likes electronic music.

The final segment of the album has some more standout tracks in Lupe’s career. “All Black Everything” is a unique one where Lupe imagines a universe where slavery never happened, making it a more memorable track. While the John Legend collaboration on the closing track “Never Forget You” is ironically forgettable (“The Show Goes On” does a better job delivering a similar message), the two bonus tracks are often remembered as standout singles/leaks for the album. “I’m Beamin” probably has the best production on the entire album (courtesy of The Neptunes), and the great songwriting tying together the three verses on this track makes it a favourite among Lupe Fiasco fans. The album ends with “Shining Down,” the only song on Lasers produced by Soundtrakk, who produced several of Lupe’s best songs on his previous two albums, including “Kick, Push” and “Superstar.”

Overall, while Lasers is a major outlier in Lupe Fiasco’s discography, there are still a few gems here which make it unfair to call this a complete write-off. Lupe experimented with a few dance songs, and while he showed that he can pull it off just as well as any other rapper willing to partake in cookie-cutter pop songs, they fell flat because they’re just not the type of songs Lupe is loved for. It’s similar to when Common tried doing dance songs on his Universal Mind Control album; they just didn’t fit the brand he had already established for himself. Besides the dance songs however, there are several tracks that deserve to stand among Lupe’s best work.

So does Lasers deserve to die? While it’s the most pop-flavoured out of all of Lupe’s albums, I think there are many songs on here that are too important to Lupe Fiasco’s career for them to be thrown away. Music is subjective to opinion though, which is why it’s completely valid for fans to hate this album. I will be hanging on to my Lasers CD and my “Words I Never Said” lyric poster, but at least one of my fellow writers here at Cultured Vultures is considering sending their copy to Lupe, just for the sake of seeing something get destroyed by a laser beam. This could be a marketing ploy to get people to buy the album just to send it in for destruction, but it should be fun to watch regardless.