Lupe Fiasco’s DROGAS Wave is both the best album the Chicagoan rapper has given us in the past two decades of his career and the best album that the hip-hop genre offered up to the world in the year of 2018.

It has also been, unfortunately but not surprisingly, ignored, debuting at #60 on the Billboard 200 charts and selling just under 5,000 copies — the least commercially successful album of Lupe’s career. Its low sales numbers are merely an example of a growing issue.

Currently, frivolous entertainment is being masqueraded around as mass art. That’s what so much of hip-hop is now. It claims an individualistic autonomy but can function only as a facade. A self-serving veneer, it masks unhealthy hedonism and crass consumerism. It rejoices in theatrical hysterics and self-destructive hubris. It enables narcissism. It is specifically designed for a temporary purpose, commodified to appeal to the trendy and dizzying pace of social media, to temporarily satiate but slowly addict the tongues and minds of a fast-food culture. Here today, forgotten tomorrow, mass art is distractionary. It does not allow us the important human distinction of self-introspection. It does not encourage us to think critically. It does not encourage us to meaningfully look after ourselves and each other.



This is why Lupe Fiasco is so different. Lupe’s music (and that of few others like him), as genuine art, is informed by collective experience but is ultimately born out of individual conscience. It allows us to truly examine our society and identify our problems, to not only look in the mirror but look outside of ourselves, to think critically of the personal troubles of, say, depression and suicide and turn them in on themselves, to expose the true source of structural issues and environmental factors in our crazy world that plague the human condition. Even his most technically dense lyrical flexes communicate, sometimes cryptically and sometimes not so cryptically, something about the world that we may not have known. A new way of seeing things, an exercise in thinking, the drive to investigate, the joy of discovery. This empowers us to truly think, to be intentional and to take action.



Not a lot of what passes for hip-hop does anymore. Even someone as technically proficient and gifted with the pen like Eminem, for example, often gets lost in the specialized acrobatics of multisyllabic rhyme and forgets to communicate an actual point. It becomes a self-aggrandizing boast, a display of skill with no meaningful purpose, an example of spectacle.



This is why Lupe is one of a kind. He can skillfully and easily wave the wand and manifest something absurdly detailed like “Mural”, but every couplet has purpose. They reveal things about himself, about who he is, and how he sees the world, and in the course of all of that, we learn too. We can revisit it time and time again and glean new things. We can enjoy the mystique and the technique just as much as we can enjoy the linguistics and the solutions.



That’s what art does. That’s why Lupe stands apart.

If, for instance, we were to set Lupe alongside his foremost Chicagoan peer, Kanye West, the gulf is still wide. I very much enjoyed The Life of Pablo (any album that has divine gems on it like “Ultralight Beam” and “Saint Pablo” on it can’t be entirely bad), and I liked ye, his most recent seven-track offering this past summer, too. To say that The Life of Pablo and ye were going to do better commercially than DROGAS Wave is a no-brainer; Kanye is as much of a celebrity as he is an artist, and this guarantees that anything he does will have a long shelf life. That doesn’t mean the popularity of his recent music makes it any better than Wave.



Even if I were to compare these two specifically, it’s a foolish setup. I trust The Life of Pablo will be remembered because of its schizophrenic gospel undertones, its auteristic fashion-related premiere, and its innovative (others would say gimmicky) evolution in real time.



I trust that DROGAS Wave will be remembered too, and for reasons that are just compelling on their own. The overarching cloud of struggle that’s been cast over the whole work thanks to Lupe’s past label experiences, which he finally overcame, is reason enough for this to be memorable. But there’s more: an audacious concept, an exposé of the slave trade and corporate personhood both robbing black bodies of individual autonomy (this might sound familiar to a “New Slaves” fan), a willingness to try different, often difficult, approaches to language and narrative. This is, objectively, as strong as anything Kanye has done.



The better album is what matters to me. That’s still DROGAS Wave, by a long shot. I trust that, if there’s a world still around 75 years from now, there will be an audience who will be shocked we didn’t give DROGAS Wave the attention it deserved.



The best art always endures. DROGAS Wave will endure.

Whatever the “culture” is now largely thrives off commodity. Outlets like Hot 97 and The Breakfast Club are no exception. They’re containers. Even someone as fascinating and unconventional as Joe Budden is not immune.



If you are waiting around for any of these “gatekeepers” to give DROGAS Wave its due, don’t hold your breath. Many of the genre’s artists are doing the best they can (and often indeed doing some admittedly noteworthy things, making something out of nothing), but an album like DROGAS Wave doesn’t come around very often. This current atmosphere cares more about brand than it does the actual product. Lupe’s “role” as the go-to hip-hop sage is not quite his anymore, and even those who occupy that role now (namely, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole) wisely do their best to simply put their music out and then step away from the limelight. Deep down they know that this celebrity culture is poison, that humans cannot become idols because they were never meant to be.



Lupe knows this as well, which is why he does fewer and fewer interviews post-Lasers. Many of these rap sites are frauds, just like the broader music publications. But a “culture” less committed to grandstanding would be embracing DROGAS Wave and Tetsuo & Youth as urgently and triumphantly as they did To Pimp a Butterfly and 2014 Forest Hills Drive. It’s just a sign of the times.



There will come a time when Kendrick and Cole are no longer as favored as they are. Until that inevitable time, it is what it is, and enjoy it for what it is. Lupe’s “time” may be over, but I have faith that his art will transcend long past this fast-food, click-driven culture.



That is the art that stands apart.



That is the art that lasts.