Lupe Fiasco's The Cool: Difference between revisions

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Lupe Fiasco's The Cool is the second album from Lupe Fiasco. It is due out on December 18, 2007 in United States and January 14, 2008 in United Kingdom. The first single is confirmed to be "Superstar". He has filmed a video for the street single entitled "Dumb it Down" and posted it on Youtube.

The album cover utilizes Islamic calligraphy style letters and other Arabic type characters to spell out Lupe Fiasco.

Production

Lupe Fiasco's The Cool will be handled in large part by FNF producers, particularly Soundtrakk. It will also feature a track from Chad Hugo and Patrick Stump.

Lupe states for this album:

The pieces won't come together, seriously, until like three weeks before it comes out. We'll probably record everything in, like, a week. So we're just gonna get it all together, map it out, have it done to a T, and then go and record. Then fresh from the studio, fresh to mastering ...so it eliminates a lot of time and error that was surrounding my debut.

Concept

Lupe Fiasco's The Cool expands on the story Lupe told on the track, "The Cool", from his debut album. Fiasco introduces the characters the Streets and the Game. Each character has defining attributes: The Game has dice for eyes and blunts for arms. The Streets is a temptress with dollar signs for eyes and tattoos of ex-boyfriends like Al Capone and Alexander the Great. The album tells the story of the little boy from "He Say/She Say" who grew up without a father, and the people that step in to raise him are the Streets and the Game. Speaking on the concept Lupe said:

I expand on the story, I introduce two other characters, the Game and the Streets. The Streets is a female. She's like the action personification of the streets, the street life, the call of the streets. The Game is the same way. The Game is the personification of the game. The pimp's game, the hustler's game, the con man's game, whatever. Then they've got supernatural characteristics. Like the Cool, his right hand is rotted away. The only thing that rotted away was his right hand. It represents the rotting away of his righteousness, of his good. And the Streets and the Cool kind of have a love affair going on. So she's represented by this locket. And the locket has a key and it's on fire. And as a gift to the Cool on his rise to fame, she gave him the key. And the key represents the key to the Streets. So she wears a locket around her neck at all times. And the way the story goes, she has given that key to tons of people throughout time. Al Capone, Alexander the Great, whatever. She's giving them the key to the Streets. Fame and fortune-- but also the prices. The Game, he's represented by a stripped-down skull, a skull with dice in his eyes and smoke coming out of his mouth. The billowing smoke is actually crack smoke. It's not a full concept album; it's more spread over like five [tracks], really abstractly.

Lupe also stated that there are plans to spin Lupe Fiasco's The Cool into a horror-themed radio program, and a comic book.

Confirmed Tracklist

Confirmed by source.

1. Baba Says Cool for Thought
2. Free Chilly f. Sarah Green & Gemstones
3. Go Go Gadget Flow
4. The Coolest
5. Superstar f. Matthew Santos
6. Paris Tokyo
7. Hi-Definition f. Snoop Dogg & Pooh Bear
8. Gold Watch
9. Hip-Hop Saved My Life f. Nikki Jean
10. Intruder Alert f. Sarah Green
11. Streets on Fire
12. Little Weapon f. Bishop G & Nikki Jean
13. Gotta Eat
14. Dumb It Down f. Gemstones & Graham Burris
15. Hello/Goodbye (Uncool) f. UNKLE
16. The Die f. Gemstones
17. Put You on Game
18. Fighters f. Matthew Santos
19. Go Baby f. Gemstones

External links

• "Superstar" audio stream on Lupefiasco.com

• Snippets from The Cool