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Track List
01) Letting Go
02) Words I Never Said
03) Till I Get There
04) I Don't Wanna Care Right Now
05) Out of My Head
06) The Show Goes On 
07) Beautiful Lasers (2 Ways) (feat. MDMA)
08) Coming Up
09) State Run Radio (feat. Matt Mahaffey)
10) Break the Chain
11) All Black Everything
12) Never Forget You
13) I'm Beamin'
14) Shining Down (feat. Matthew Santos)
01) Letting Go
02) Words I Never Said
03) Till I Get There
04) I Don't Wanna Care Right Now
05) Out of My Head
06) The Show Goes On
07) Beautiful Lasers (2 Ways) (feat. MDMA)
08) Coming Up
09) State Run Radio (feat. Matt Mahaffey)
10) Break the Chain
11) All Black Everything
12) Never Forget You
13) I'm Beamin'
14) Shining Down (feat. Matthew Santos)
4:26
4:17
3:24
4:15
3:24
3:56
4:01
3:58
3:57
4:21
3:40
4:04
4:48
4:34
Data Complete
70%
Total Rating
70%Total Rating
(2 users)
Back Cover
CD Art
3D Case
3D Thumb
3D Flat
3D Face
3D Spine
First Released
2011
Hip-Hop
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Urban/R&B
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Album
500,000 copies
Album Description
Available in:
Lasers is the third studio album by American rapper Lupe Fiasco, released on March 8, 2011 by Atlantic Records in the United States. Production for the album took place between 2008 and 2010. Lasers features production by The Audibles, The Neptunes, Needlz, Alex da Kid, Syience, and long-time collaborator Soundtrakk, among others. Trey Songz, John Legend, Skylar Grey, Sway, Matt Mahaffey, MDMA, Eric Turner and Sarah Green contribute vocals to the album.
Lasers was preceded by the lead single "The Show Goes On" and its follow-up "Words I Never Said" featuring Skylar Grey. The former became Fiasco's highest charting song on the Billboard Hot 100 and has been certified double platinum in the US. The latter, however, only achieved moderate success on the Hot 100.
The album has received mixed reviews from most major music critics, having a score of 57 out of 100 at the review aggregator Metacritic. It fared better commercially however, debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200 with first-week sales of over 200,000 copies sold, making the album Fiasco's second top ten album as well as his highest entry on the chart.
User Album Review
It’s been four years since Lupe Fiasco’s startling second outing, The Cool, confirmed the Chicago rapper as an important new maverick figure in hip hop. Since then, wrangles over creative direction with his label Atlantic (bizarrely, they wanted hits – as opposed to most major labels who are just begging for a King of Limbs from every artist) have delayed and derailed his plans for the follow-up.
The dispute between the forces of creativity and commerce are writ large across the finished product. "Things are getting out of control / Feels like I’m running out of soul" claims the opening track Letting Go, and yet the world-weary feel works well. Hip hop purists might baulk at the creamy melodies that dress up Lupe’s breathless diatribes, yet there’s something riveting about the undercurrent of confusion that envelopes this tune. Better still is Words I Never Said, taking scattershot aim at everything from Obama’s policy on Gaza to education budget cuts. It’s Lupe at his brilliant best – with ideas spewing forth at a rate which leaves your head spinning.
After that, though, RnB syrup starts to swamp the lyrical invention. It’s depressing that such an original talent still feels the need to coat every vocal melody in the electro-voiced gloop of A*to-T*ne, in stark non-contrast to 97% of current chart singles. Is the label solely to blame for that?
Cuts like the bouncing, urgent I Don’t Wanna Care Right Now are infectious pop-rap which would do lesser talents proud, while The Show Goes On engagingly samples Modest Mouse. But ultimately, where The Cool continually pricked up your ears, large swathes of Lasers go in one and out of the other. Then you hear the penultimate track, All Black Everything, and get another glimpse of what this man is capable of. It’s a ‘what if…?’ satirical reimagining of history wherein slavery never happened, considering its knock-on effects on modern cultural landscape. "The rat pack was a cool group of black men," he tells us, "that inspired the five white guys called the Jacksons."
For inspired moments like that, and a couple of other tracks where he lets his talent run wild, Lupe remains a singular hip hop voice, and Lasers is still worth a listen.
External Album Reviews
None...
User Comments
Available in:
Lasers is the third studio album by American rapper Lupe Fiasco, released on March 8, 2011 by Atlantic Records in the United States. Production for the album took place between 2008 and 2010. Lasers features production by The Audibles, The Neptunes, Needlz, Alex da Kid, Syience, and long-time collaborator Soundtrakk, among others. Trey Songz, John Legend, Skylar Grey, Sway, Matt Mahaffey, MDMA, Eric Turner and Sarah Green contribute vocals to the album.
Lasers was preceded by the lead single "The Show Goes On" and its follow-up "Words I Never Said" featuring Skylar Grey. The former became Fiasco's highest charting song on the Billboard Hot 100 and has been certified double platinum in the US. The latter, however, only achieved moderate success on the Hot 100.
The album has received mixed reviews from most major music critics, having a score of 57 out of 100 at the review aggregator Metacritic. It fared better commercially however, debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200 with first-week sales of over 200,000 copies sold, making the album Fiasco's second top ten album as well as his highest entry on the chart.
User Album Review
It’s been four years since Lupe Fiasco’s startling second outing, The Cool, confirmed the Chicago rapper as an important new maverick figure in hip hop. Since then, wrangles over creative direction with his label Atlantic (bizarrely, they wanted hits – as opposed to most major labels who are just begging for a King of Limbs from every artist) have delayed and derailed his plans for the follow-up.
The dispute between the forces of creativity and commerce are writ large across the finished product. "Things are getting out of control / Feels like I’m running out of soul" claims the opening track Letting Go, and yet the world-weary feel works well. Hip hop purists might baulk at the creamy melodies that dress up Lupe’s breathless diatribes, yet there’s something riveting about the undercurrent of confusion that envelopes this tune. Better still is Words I Never Said, taking scattershot aim at everything from Obama’s policy on Gaza to education budget cuts. It’s Lupe at his brilliant best – with ideas spewing forth at a rate which leaves your head spinning.
After that, though, RnB syrup starts to swamp the lyrical invention. It’s depressing that such an original talent still feels the need to coat every vocal melody in the electro-voiced gloop of A*to-T*ne, in stark non-contrast to 97% of current chart singles. Is the label solely to blame for that?
Cuts like the bouncing, urgent I Don’t Wanna Care Right Now are infectious pop-rap which would do lesser talents proud, while The Show Goes On engagingly samples Modest Mouse. But ultimately, where The Cool continually pricked up your ears, large swathes of Lasers go in one and out of the other. Then you hear the penultimate track, All Black Everything, and get another glimpse of what this man is capable of. It’s a ‘what if…?’ satirical reimagining of history wherein slavery never happened, considering its knock-on effects on modern cultural landscape. "The rat pack was a cool group of black men," he tells us, "that inspired the five white guys called the Jacksons."
For inspired moments like that, and a couple of other tracks where he lets his talent run wild, Lupe remains a singular hip hop voice, and Lasers is still worth a listen.
External Album Reviews
None...
User Comments
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