29 Days of Lupe Fiasco: LupEND

The last album from Lupe Fiasco should drop in two to three years, after his CRS project with Ye and Pharrell. It'll finish his supposed trilogy on the Cool. With so much anticipation and uncertainty what can we expect?

It should be just as good as Food & Liquor and The Cool. Noting that he's gotten better, LupEND will hang aroung The Cool and blow by it. His creativity is there; we, and he, knows he can push his mind farther. "Dumb It Down" although an odd fit within the Cool theme is evidence enough he could spew more classics. Lyrically Lupe is the best and hell, he could surprise us and come even harder. The Cool really hit me on all levels so I trust that LupEND will easily deliver and add more facets to Lupe.

The Cool story line gets more time to play out. Will he keep the concept constrained to five tracks or will he expand it? I'd like to see an actual concept album. Go in and kill the Cool, from start to finish. Maybe he doesn't want to do that though considering the Cool theme never goes away, it's a reocurring problem. When I mentioned the Cool's connections to Pink Floyd's The Wall, I reiterated that The Wall was able to let the story play out in full. Parts of The Cool's story line, events are left open to assumption. Does The Cool rob or kill?; The Game have reason or is there ever confrontation between The Cool and The Game?; and The Streets ever have a more documented relationship or does The Cool find out The Streets' purpose? While Lupe has given us plenty material, he hasn't focused on his characters as much as I'd of liked. He never gave The Cool hope. Maybe Cool members reach a point of no return but I don't think that's true. Very few human beings are robots and kill at will. The Cool still has a heart to me. I know what could go on with the characters--we all do--but we look for Lupe to create a new world for them to play out their perilous games.

There's the chance of not fulfilling fans' hopes. The Cool is the second best rap album ever (if you must know, The Blueprint 1 holds the # 1). With that said, if LupEND doesn't surpass The Cool, it could be considered a failure like Ye's Graduation. It'd still be great but not what we wished for. Since it's is last album, there's even more pressure. Will I be content with what he offers? I might not even if it's great.

It's all ridiculous pondering considering he just released an album. Plus he hasn't even started, and shouldn't have, the next project. Lupe has everybody geeked though by announcing his impending retirement so he that's his problem. I won't judge it until I have the physical copy in my hand--hell, I even read somewhere that LupEND is going to be a double disc (and damn if Lupe could pull that off!). I expect the best album of all time but I know I could be let down. It might sting a while too, but then I could turn on LupEND and zone.