With Lupe’s 5th studio album Tetsou & Youth just hitting record store shelves, I decided to take a trip down memory lane to explain the importance of his debut record Food & Liquor and its impact on hip-hop.
I’ll admit, I was late on the Lupe train, when F&L came out I had just turned thirteen and I thought hip-hop didn’t get better than Linkin Park. Coincidentally one year later, a close friend came into the possession of a copy of Food & Liquor that he ‘found’ at Frankston beach. I’m sure Lupe would agree that ‘the Force’ was definitely at work as his album had such a direct impact on me, drastically shifting my musical landscape and funnily enough, even leading me to gain employment at his Record label.
The record had its fair share of problems, mostly the production from the F&F team which made Lupe sound like he was some sort of super-hero, however, I still believe the Food definitely outweighed the Liquor and strongly believe that it’s one of the most underrated hip-hop record of the 2000’s.
A quick time-hop back into MTV and what their 2006 year looked like for ‘Hip-hop’ and you’ll see tracks like, Nelly – Grillz, T.I – What You Know, D4L – Laffy Taffy, and F&L’s first single, Kick, Push.
Kick, Push on the surface is a charming song about skating, with epic-cinematic like production from Soundtrakk and a chorus which has become a rap-karaoke favorite. However, if you listen deeper, it’s about youth and the troubles of growing up, finding love, rejection and adulthood. Kick, Push tells a story, and when it came out, storytelling was not common in hip-hop that was endorsed on the ‘commercial’ radio and video programs that I was exposed to. It broke through with its catchy tune and sing-along chorus and in doing so, introduced me and many others to a style of hip-hop mostly ignored by said media. This might not sound super important to you, but when you’re growing up in the Burbs and your pals think that Kyle Sandilands has great taste, it is. Especially in 2006, music discovery wasn’t what is now, to paint the picture clearer, Google had only just taken over YouTube, and there was no way I was going to find Dilla’s Donuts. The single encouraged me not only to listen to the rest of the record, but to continually re-listen to it in its entirety to pick up on new metaphors and references. I soon gained a love for depth and complexity in music and the challenge it invoked. It sent me on a quest to find more hip-hop with depth, which of course led me to the greats: Nas, Gang Starr, Big L, Big Pun, ATCQ, Slick Rick, Mos Def, etc. Inevitably my love for electronic music soon expanded from this having jumped on the Flying Lotus and the LA beats wagon.
Food & Liquor was far from just an album that introduced me to better things, in fact, it remains as one of my favorites to this day. Lupe’s word play, storytelling and metaphors in F&L could be compared to the style of Nas. Which makes a lot of sense when you find out Lupe based the album on Nas’ second record It Was Written, itself another underrated record. The manner in which Lupe portrays cities, characters, moods and emotions in tracks is astonishing and the way he makes them relatable, I think can only be matched by a few. “Out of the trillions of numbers in the world/just leave me a few that lead to you” Lupe spits on Sunshine, a track that describes perfectly the anxiousness and excitement that precedents a date in one humble verse with, “Had a feeling that it would be a day like this/ The orchestra in my mind don’t play like this” (Naw) “But I’m prepared for it, Got a lil rare for it, Brushed off my airs, Even cut my hair for it”. Cute with its simplicity, but exactly on point, and my favorite line from Sunshine, “Out of the trillions of numbers in the world/just leave me a few that lead to you” may just be the smoothest method of obtaining someone’s number.
Continuing on, tracks like The Cool scream Nas to me, “He came back, in the same suit that he was buried in/ similar to the one his grandfather was married in” portrays an eerie story about a ‘hustla’ self-titled in the track name, who is shot and believed to be killed by his former partner The Game, whom then arises from his grave six months later, returning to his hood and ironically robbed by a group of kids at gunpoint by the same gun he was shot with. The track, more conceptual in its nature than Nas’ early records, still appeals in the same way through storytelling that Nas did.
The last track I want to touch on and most definitely the records most powerful and unique track is Hurt Me Soul, the wordplay, metaphors and the amount of issues prominent in the world that Lupe touches on in under three verses really sees Lupe at his absolute pinnacle. “What constitutes a prostitute is the pursuit of profit then they drop it, The homie in a suit pat her on the butt, then rock it, It seems I was seeing the same scene adopted, Prevalent in different things with the witnesses indifferent to stop it & “All the world’s ill, sitting on chrome 24’ inch wheels”, sit on all that that for a while.
There’s no denying Food & Liquor has helped pave the way for a lot for hip-hop artists, while the record may have missed the mark with Lupe not being the ‘hip-hop savior’ everyone expected him to be, he did influence great modern hip-hop artists such as J Cole, Chance the Rapper and Ab-Soul whom noted ‘Lupe’ as his mentor. Recent records as J Cole’s – Forest Hills Drive (which I highly recommend) clearly shows that the F&L influence is still alive in 2015. Now with Tetsuo & Youth receiving high praise and The Fader announcing that it’s cool to listen to Lupe again you should also take that trip down memory lane by chucking on Food & Liquor, and enjoying what is, a fantastic hip-hop record. Make sure you ignore the artwork though.
-Louis P
