The dude is a lyrical monster...but his lyrical exercise songs have become so convoluted. shyt, his music in general has. That Hitchcock, hitch hike, "hand"gun scheme was dope as fukk but he can't help but keep stretching the shyt out to the point it's a chore to follow along instead of being enjoyable. Lupe's music used to be like reading poetry. Now it's like doing a crossword puzzle.
Lupe The Killer, Mean & Vicious, Failure, Theme Music to a Driveby...his "show off how ill I am lyrically" tracks used to be so dope. You'd break his shyt down because you enjoyed the song in the first place. You caught the surface wordplay and some of the deeper stuff, and would be discovering new shyt on your 100th play. But only reason there was a 100th play is because of how dope an overall track it was. Lyrically, technically, thematically, musically. His music gets the few replays it does now because I know he's lyrical and want to see if I missed anything. SL3 got played once all the way through. Replays were just parts of the song I wanted to decipher further. After a while I really don't give a fukk about what Lupe is trying to mean by saying "back" and "front" for the 20th time in a row. Cool Lupe, you're using "pier" and other versions of it for half a verse. This nikka made a song about a damn cheeseburger kingpin that was entertaining as hell. With all that creativity you instead choose the bland route of exhausting every possible way you can flip a couple words?
I know that I need to go back to decipher part of a Lupe verse whenever I start thinking "this nikka's rambling again"
I took an excerpt of SLR 3 and took an excerpt a third of the size from Failure. Be honest, now. The excerpt from Failure, despite being a third the size, is much stronger and says so much more than the excerpt from SLR3. This is what I've been trying to verbalize for so long about this nikka Lupe's music nowadays. He used to make this shyt look effortless. That Usual Suspects line is more impressive to me than anything off of SLR3, yet SLR3 comes off like a dude trying his hardest to be as complex as possible. He used to extend references and metaphors expertly and never too far. I listen to dude's music nowadays and ask myself "Is he even having fun anymore?
"
I'll ask some of y'all this simple question: do any of you see yourselves reciting any of these SLR tracks word for word a year from now? I can recite Failure or Lupe the Killer in my sleep. Y'all are trying to make this a Lupe vs Kendrick thing, but it isn't. It's Lupe vs. Lupe. He felt the need to do this because he sees someone getting the love he used to get. The thing is, he's not getting that love because of what
he's doing not because of what Kendrick is doing. If you think Lupe would murder Kendrick in a battle, cool. But would Lupe now murder Lupe from back then in a battle?
I know what I'm saying is 1. unpopular and 2. Long as fukk, so whatever "Didn't read" gifs I get are cool
) so i dont have to listen to the music to remember how it goes
. The way Lu gives you some shyt, goes another direction, then comes back to it intermingling the different rhymes is heavenly. He packs it in there... On Failure he had one segment where he did it... Where he's rappin then goes, "There's snakes in the hood/gotta watch for that cobra bite" he had left that rhyme pattern earlier then brings it back, its a thing of beauty. nikkaz aint catching all the intricacies in a Lupe verse. Its more than just the lyrics, its the flow and patterns. He's just better and I appreciate that shyt.