A little while back Lupe Fiasco dropped a new single from Food and Liquor 2 called "Bitch Bad". It continued his trend of "socially conscious" hip-hop and polarized listeners just as his past work has, with some embracing the positive message and others rolling their eyes and screaming "WE GET IT, WE GET IT." I was in the latter camp. It's really difficult for me to see Lupe's side in this latest stunt. Bitch Bad got the video treatment earlier this week, and a blogger for Spin magazine gave it a less than flattering review. Here's the video:
After the review hit, Lupe became enraged and took to his Twitter account to call his fans to boycott Spin for "publicly disrespecting him personally." Now, having heard this before reading the review, I felt "OK, maybe this blogger took it over the line and insulted the rapper instead of his work." After all, that shit does happen, especially with web criticism. After reading the actual review, however, I now fail to see how the blogger went off-base at all. Everything he said was backed up with evidence depicted in the video, which he embedded to allow people to see for themselves. The crown jewel of his argument was the (extremely) thinly-veiled Sugar Water product placement and 50-Cent parody in the video. One could argue that the generic thug rapper in the video could have been a number of mainstream artists, but 50's affiliation with Vitamin Water rules out all possiblities of coincidence. So Lupe can sling mud at 50 Cent and point the finger at hip-hop as a culture all he wants, but as soon as someone gives him a taste of his own medicine, he gets pissy and calls the blogger a "bully". Give me a fucking break.
I just don't know where Lupe gets this whole pedestal from. His last record had that "Show Goes On" single that was simply unavoidable on radio airwaves for months, then he says radio rap is all shit. He conveniently seems to forget that that same song is part of the problem. It's a cliched, watered-down message that is not nearly as innovative or clever as he thinks it is. You might think "But it was a positive song about keeping strong in times of despair!" So fuckin' what? Tupac did that two decades ago, and much better I might add, in "Keep Your Head Up". Had Pac been around today he would've been the same thug rapper Lupe loves to eviscerate in every song. Socially conscious artists are always delicately walking the fence between preachy and intelligent, and artists like Common manage to do so gracefully while delivering messages that are still unique, that we can still learn from. Lupe repackages Hallmark card quotes, hops on his pedestal, and points at the whole culture for fucking up. And his fans embrace it because his lyrics are supposedly such a "high caliber" (it's all subjective, but really, what part of his music have we not heard before from Gang Starr?) and, after all, it's got a POSITIVE MESSAGE! Yeah, alright. Positivity is great, but only when you're covering new ground and aren't just recycling tired old messages and faux-social commentary.
You want a positive hip-hop song with actual lyricism and a message behind it? Might I direct you to a little up-and-comer by the name of Hopsin:
I know Lupe has a lot of fans here on GB, so I'm curious to see your side of the story. As someone who has never liked Lupe, his music, or anything he stands for, as well as being subscribed to Spin, I do come from a position of bias here.
Hopskinp or whatever his name is ... All he's doing is shouting at rap culture while living it. He's kind of a talentless dick.
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