LASERS Part II

When LASERS was released in spring of 2011 fans of Lupe Fiasco had mixed reactions.  Some of the songs on the album, like Words I Never Said and All Black Everything felt like songs were Lupe rapped his heart out.  Originally Words I Never Said was supposed to be a song about a couple that had a bad relationship.  Lupe instead of doing this like Atlantic wanted he instead did a very political song were he vents about problems about the world.  All Black Everything is a song were he talks about if slavery and racism did not exist.  The issue with the rest of the album is that the production does not complement his lyrics.  Atlantic Records gave Lupe a set of beats and hooks and told him he had to rap over these beats because Atlantic felt like it would make his music easier to market.  Some of the songs had a good message but the production let the album down.  Atlantic Records in the last couple of years has been pushing hip hop artist that are signed to them to make more pop radio sounding album.  To prime example of this was T.I.’s album Paper Trail and B.o.B’s album The Adventures of Bobby Ray.  Atlantic Records for T.I.’s album designed multiple radio friendly singles that would most likely do well.  Atlantic doing this helped the album go gold first week and it went double platinum in the US.  I do feel like Atlantic Records watered down T.I.’s rawness.  B.o.B’s album had two giant radio singles Airplanes and Nothin’ On You that were designed by Atlantic Records to be giant pop singles.  Before this B.o.B was an up and coming Mixtape Hip Hop artist who used a larger variety of production and his songs had a meaning.  Once he signed with Atlantic they told him what he had to do and he accepted it. Originally Airplanes and Nothin’ On You were supposed to be Lupe’s songs for LASERS but Atlantic Records after forcing Lupe to do both tracks said his version was not that great and then gave then to B.o.B.  LASERS did do well sales wise because it went Gold a couple months after release and the single Shows Goes On has sold 2.8 million copies in the US.  In November Lupe Fiasco released a mixtape Friend of The People as a gift to the fans for supporting him.  On this mixtape he raps over a large variety of beats including electronic music, jazz, and regular hip hop beats.  This mixtape gave us an idea of what LASERS could have been if Atlantic did not take over creative control of the album.