Lupe Fiasco’s Tetsuo and Youth is a mixed bag that’s one part caramel covered chocolate and one part gravel. It’s peppered with tracks that deserve listens, and salted with tracks that really have no place being on this, or any, album.
The album is loosely separated into four parts, opening with Summer, moving to Fall, progressing to Winter, and ending with the track Spring. Summer sets a tone of forgotten youth and seasons passed which leads perfectly into the album’s best track Mural. Unfortunately Mural is good for all the wrong reasons. Its eight minutes of what made Lupe what we know him for; a good beat with a rhythmic flow that gives Lupe some time to shine as a rapper. This would be great if the rest of the album was also this good. Spoiler alert: It’s not.
Summer ends with the track Dots & Lines, which is a track that really encompasses the confusion that is this album. It’s disconnected and boring. Repetitive beyond reason and sadly its a track that will easily get stuck in your head. It has no real theme, instead blending a myriad of sounds and feelings that create a sort of frankenstein track. It bewilders the listener into wondering why they put the album on.
Dots & Lines – Single from Tetsuo & Youth
Fall sets up a section of the album with sounds reminiscent of Summer, but with a noticeable turn towards something that seems to be ending. This section is four tracks long, though it should have been five, and feels coherent. Coming off the confusing Summer section, its a welcome move. By the end of Fall the listener will have forgotten Dots & Lines and the pitfalls it foretold.
Winter, however, sets the tone for the last section of the album with a discordant and eerie vibe that sends shivers up the spine. It’s fitting, because not a single track from here on out is any good at all (with the exception of Deliver). Its a blur of generic hip-hop that doesn’t deserve to be on the same album as Mural.
By the time Spring begins, the album has traveled a path from good to terrible, and while the sounds of Winter seem to linger on, the sense that Summer is just around the corner is a very real feeling.
Music aside, this seasonal progression makes the album worth the listen. It seems like Lupe is saying something with the listings and how they move from one to another, almost as if that Summer (Food & Liquor) we all knew and loved and the Fall which followed it (The Cool) , was supplanted with a blustery Winter (Lasers) that we all wish we could have avoided. Luckily, the album ends with Spring and the hope that Summer will be back.
-David Navarro