We Are Lasers

Lupe Fiasco has always been one of my favourite artists in music, his storytelling, wordplay and metaphoric rhymes have always been one to make me actually listen and pay attention to his songs so of course I was going to be pretty hyped for Lasers (Love Always Shines Everywhere, Remember 2 Smile)...whenever it was going to come out.

On first impressions, I was always going to be disappointed with the album as it had release date problems and label issues meant I was worried about how exactly this would turn out. I heard Shining Down and liked it but it was obvious that it was a song for radio and all that, I also heard I'm Beaming which I also liked but again, was a song for the radio but it was all good, but I was still waiting for the album.

Then I got wind of the track list and such is the recent trend that's been going round, it was 12 tracks.

No. No. And no. Getting hyped up for this album for 12 tracks, I was somewhat disappointed as I don't know, I was expecting a 15+ album but what can you do. Upon further inspection of the track listing you had to note the complete lack I'm Beaming and Shining Down (later added as bonus tracks) and no Matthew Santos or Gemstones. This was going to be different, wait what. Trey Songz is one of the guests? Oh...kay, that's worrying. Sway is on it? Interesting, I was curious to hear how that goes as I want to hear how Sway's style would fit into it. This will be an interesting album.

Then Words I Never Said and All Black Everything came out and I had sort of learned from the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy saga not to listen to it as it will spoil my listening of the album and there weren't many tracks on the album so I wanted to enjoy it as a whole. Anyway, after finally listening to the album, I felt slightly...meh, nothing special here, my most liked tracks being the bonus tracks, 'Words I Never Said', 'Never Forget You' and 'All Black Everything' and the others were okay, not brill but okay with lots of people slating 'I Don't Wanna Care Right Now' and the use of auto tune. I conceded that this wasn't a patch on Food & Liquor and The Cool but I think that was expected but was the album going to be consigned to the graveyard on my iPod along with others or would it be getting constant plays at various times?

It's not horrendous, no, not at all, in fact it's starting to grow on me, even that Trey Songz song 'Outta My Head' and that I do like some of the tracks but then when I give recent tracks like SLR (TEN FO'!), Fire, We Can Do It Now and Go To Sleep, I just think, it could have been better and that.

Here's hoping his next few albums are amazing again, right now I'm going to listen to it all again.