Serious bonus points go out to anyone who can manage to extract some kind of meaningful narrative out of The Cool, Lupe Fiasco's purported concept album. His pre-hype interviews may have informed us that the record centers around three metaphysical characters called The Cool (spun off from the track of the same name from Lupe's 2006 debut Food & Liquor), The Streets, and The Game, but it turns out those facts-- or any discernable storyline, really-- aren't immediately evident from just, you know, listening to the album.
There's a fine line between respecting your listeners' intelligence and mistaking your own vague allusions and abstrusities for some kind of coherent statement, and this time around, Lupe's landed on the wrong side of that line. But here's the thing: The Cool ultimately features enough isolated moments of widescreen drama that what it fails to deliver in terms of a linear experience, it makes up for in sheer pathos. There are genuinely thrilling moments to be had here; some of it from Fiasco's storytelling abilities, some of it from his lyrical dexterity, and some of it from his willingness to submerge himself in the theatre of it all. Add it up and you have an album that unwittingly delivers on its promises, even if it takes a slightly convoluted route there.
The Cool's overarching story may exist mostly in Lupe's head, but there is some sort of vague logic to its structure. Forgetting the cringeworthy and condescending opening monologue "Baba Says Cool for Thought" (which you should probably play once for laughs before banishing to the trash can), its first portion is relatively untroubled by any of Lupe's big-picture proselytizing. Instead, we get tracks like the virtuosic double-time of "Go Go Gadget Flow" (mostly just a lyrical flex) and the hooky first single "Superstar", with Fiasco protégé Matthew Santos (who has probably heard a few Coldplay albums) playing Adam Levine to Fiasco's Kanye West. There are also two other highlights upfront: the bittersweet chamberpop lament of "The Coolest", on which Lupe, backed by a choir and dripping strings, weighs up his conflictedness with a laser-sharp opening line ("I love the Lord/ But sometimes it's like that I love me more") and the lazy jazz of the shuffling "Paris, Tokyo", which adds another dimension to this past October's Fiascogate by sounding pretty much exactly like vintage A Tribe Called Quest.
Conflict is a big part of Fiasco's persona, and in this record's first half, he wrestles with it accordingly, tempering any allusions to his comfortable lifestyle with what sound like warnings to himself. As these become increasingly portentous, the album's production style moves towards darker, more cinematic flourishes; as if moving in time with the circling pianos, brooding strings, and moody guitar squalls, Fiasco pulls the camera back from himself to take a rooftop-level view of his surroundings. The rest of the album plays out this way, with the first person expunged from the frame and replaced by Fiasco in storytelling mode.
When it works, it works tremendously. Much has been made of Fiasco's love of comic books, and indeed there are stretches during this second half where you can feel him working a lot of the same angles; his predilection for stylized city-under-siege dystopia is so refined that it's not difficult to imagine these stories playing out in panels. The beautifully shaded rapper origin story "Hip-Hop Saved My Life" kicks off an evocative three-song stretch that includes the chilling "Intruder Alert" (which uses the title phrase to connect the stories of a rape victim, a drug addict, and a landed immigrant) and the doomsdayish "Streets on Fire". Elsewhere, though, tracks like the much-maligned "Gotta Eat" (on which Fiasco uses a cheeseburger as a clumsy metaphor for the high-calorie lifestyle of the streets, or something), the UNKLE-produced, rap/metal, sub-Linkin Parkisms of "Hello/Goodbye (Uncool)", and the jokey closer "Go Baby" render the album's final third a mixed, occasionally tedious, and anti-climactic affair that provides little in the way of satisfying resolution.
With the notable exceptions of Snoop Dogg (who appears on the middling party track "Hi-Definition"), Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump (who lends production to the surprisingly bumping "Little Weapon"), and UNKLE, there isn't much room for outside collaboration on The Cool. In fact, from Santos and producer Soundtrakk to Chicagoan rapper Gemstones and vocalist Sarah Green, most of the album's remaining featured talent comes courtesy of 1st and 15th, the Atlantic-bankrolled label of which Fiasco is co-founder and acting CEO. While the jury's still out on whether that stems from a canny marketing sense or control-freakishness, it doesn't leave much room to doubt that the vision for this sprawling, grandiose, and occasionally overambitious record came from anyone other than Fiasco himself. Whether he delivered on the full extent of what he wanted to achieve is up for debate; luckily, he's good enough that even when he comes up short, he's still better than most.
