Lupe Fiasco has spent his entire career between a rock and a hard place, trying to find a balance between being a commercially successful star that reaches the masses and a “conscious” rapper that can enlighten and elevate his listeners. He’s also had some squabbles with Atlantic Records about his contract and the type of records he’d like to release, but starting his career in 2006, I’m a bit confused why he’d strike a deal with a major label in the first place, especially after his first deal with Arista failed to go through. This conflict was more or less used to excuse Lasers, but I don’t know if that’s enough to explain what’s happening with Food & Liquor II.

The production on FLII is what hits you first upon listening to the album. It opens with a couple of tracks produced by Soundtrakk and 1500 or Nothin’, which both sound like they’re trying to capture Kanye somewhere around Graduation. This is to say it’s not bad, but it isn’t necessarily inspired, either. “Around My Way (Freedom Ain’t Free)” sounds great, but that’s because it’s just a reworking of “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” by Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth, one of the great hip hop songs of all time. “Bitch Bad” brings in Poo Bear, who was obviously used to give Lupe a sound like Lil Wayne, and strictly from a production sense, this might be the most interesting track on the record. He brings in a few more producers to continue on this Dirty South vein for a little while, but none deliver anything the least bit inspired. We then move into some Pop/R&B/Hip Hop area, which sounds fine, but never hits a stride that allows a song to stand out. Most importantly, there’s never a point on the album where a production style clicks with Lupe’s delivery that makes you think, “That works! That’s what he should be doing!” Everything just sounds like mediocre versions of themselves, and it certainly doesn’t flow or come together over the course of the album. The way he constantly poorly flirts with pop production style once again makes me wonder why Lupe continues to work like this. If it really is a case of clashing with a major label, I’d much rather have an album like Mos Def’s True Magic, which remains one of the most obvious and yet still bizarre “fuck you” to a record label. I think the biggest problem with the musical style on the record is that Lupe hasn’t really proven he can do either pop or abstract well, and it’s not like he’s found a good middle ground. His flow sounds most natural over Pete Rock’s “T.R.O.Y.” beat, but he seems to have such a weird relationship with Native Tongues hip hop, I’m not sure if that’s a style he’d be interested in exploring further.

All this discussion of the production would be one thing if it was clear that a talented emcee just needed to find the right producers that could bring out the best in him. However, Lupe’s greatest flaw is that he too often gets on his soapbox and talks down to his audience, and never develops an interesting flow or prose. On no track is he more guilty than “Bitch Bad,” a song that in theory is supposed to be pro-woman, but is such a swing and a miss, I’m just left shaking my head. The song features a chorus in which Lupe declares “Bitch bad, woman good, lady better, they misunderstood.” He then spends the entire song talking down to both men and women, but more importantly doesn’t seem to have a firm grip on the message himself. In the first verse, he blames a mother for singing along to a song with a chorus about a bad bitch, therefore screwing up her son’s perception of women for life. In the second verse, while not skillfully executed, he delivers his most on-point verse, discussing how rap videos can skew little girls perceptions of themselves when they don’t have any adults around who can talk to them about self image. In the third verse, Lupe declares “Disclaimer: this rhymer, Lupe, is not usin’ “bitch” as a lesson, but as a psychological weapon, to set in your mind and really mess with your conceptions, discretions, reflections, it’s clever misdirection.” If only this were true, but he jumps right back into talking down to his audience, again placing the majority of blame on the woman, where the girl in this song has now grown up into a bad bitch, and the young man, who is also grown up, doesn’t respect her and is not interested in her. To further complicate things and to illustrate that Lupe could use some good feminist guidance in his life, the song ends while the chorus is being sung, this time adding “great is motherhood,” implying that the best thing a woman can do is be a mother. This isn’t to imply that I don’t think that being a good mother isn’t important (it certainly is, and I know plenty of women who are amazing individuals and as mothers), but the simple statement in the context of this song implies that the traditional role of housekeeper and mother is what all women should strive for instead of being bad bitches. I’m sure that Lupe meant well, but it comes out as a mess. Let’s just say that this song really makes me want to listen to “Shine On” by Shad to counteract all that’s happening here.

More than anything, with Lupe’s lyrics on this album, he just doesn’t seem to trust himself or his audience. The success of an artist like Brother Ali, who one could describe as a “positive” hip hop artist, doesn’t come from him striving to earn that label and trying save hip hop from itself. Instead, he just tries to be the best person that he can be, to learn from his own struggles and those around him, and to relate that honestly in his music, which happens to be hip hop. This is the basic formula that most successful artists that can be described as “positive” follow. When people talk about how they can’t stand “conscious” or “positive” hip hop, they’re usually thinking of an artist like Lupe Fiasco, who gets up on a pedestal, wags his finger at his audience, and then gives them half-baked sermons about how it’s their fault that we’re in this mess.

At one point, I used to say that I like Lupe Fiasco better on paper than I like his albums. At this point, I think I’m ready to give up on him entirely. Maybe somewhere down the line he’ll figure it all out, but for right now I’m done with unsuccessful pop rap songs and condescended to.