Looking back, how good was Food and Liquor really?

[ISO]

Mane y’all nikkaz trollin

Kick, Push
The Cool
Hurt Me Soul
Daydreamin
American Terrorists
Theme Music to a Drive By

All classics. We talmbout timeless material or hit songs?

We got Dave East fans in here talmbout F&L is a 3 mic album… the nerve of some of y’all nikkas

Bad hooks, bad beats, and blatant Jay Z biting and all those tracks you mentioned except Kick Push are musically mediocre

This hook and outro is fukking AZZ

 

[KFBF]

It's a good album but I never feel the need to go back and listen. I run back the mixtape shyt he did before the album on occasion

 

[NoHalfWay]

Bad hooks, bad beats, and blatant Jay Z biting and all those tracks you mentioned except Kick Push are musically mediocre

This hook and outro is fukking AZZ

I ain’t gonna debate you ISO, I fux with u my nikka

Yo music taste be trash tho

And yeah Lupe was baby Hov, but nobody wanna talk about Hov biting Lupe style on Hovi Baby when he was still relatively unknown but that’s a thread for another day

 

[Cladyclad]

4 mics

nowhere near a classic

 

[ISO]

4 mics

That’s generous.

He loses a half a mic for unoriginality and an entire mic for cheap beats and cheesy hooks.

I’d take another half mic off for his vocal performance. In comparison his harmonies are worse than J. Cole’s who gets critiqued for that and his voice is not great or distinctive in any way for example someone like J. Cole at least has a standout raspy voice and Carolina drawl.

3-3.5 Mics. I know some of the albums that received 4’s and this shyt don’t stack up musically.

 

[⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐]

3.5 out of 5


Saw him live at the House of Blues in Boston and can confirm that the choruses were often flagrantly atrocious

too much aspiration to be a pop-rapper while not being a good pop songwriter

 

[Tetris v2.0]

I think Tetsuo is his classic and The Cool was such an ambitious follow up to his debut as well even if it's a little shaky.

I liked F&L and still do, but it also feels a bit safe for the time. You got the typical sequencing and framing of the "classic" debut, the Jay Z cosign, the knock off soul beats, it had a definite template to it. He still had some innovative concepts and subject matter that aged very well. It launched his career, but I definitely dug Fishscale and the Clipse album more that year.

Not a classic for me personally but I respect the argument

 

[Mr. Negative]

It was good.

But holy shyt the advance/bootleg

the last time we saw what I consider "Perfect Form" Lu. Deep enough lyrics for the lyrical miracle crowd, accessible enough for the casual.














What we got was cool, but it was.... safe? Lu from his first mixtape up until the advance may be my all time all era GOAT, edging out 1990-1993 Ice Cube and Nas

 

[Mr. Negative]

I think Tetsuo is his classic and The Cool was such an ambitious follow up to his debut as well even if it's a little shaky.

I liked F&L and still do, but it also feels a bit safe for the time. You got the typical sequencing and framing of the "classic" debut, the Jay Z cosign, the knock off soul beats, it had a definite template to it. He still had some innovative concepts and subject matter that aged very well. It launched his career, but I definitely dug Fishscale and the Clipse album more that year.

Not a classic for me personally but I respect the argument

right. safe.

 

[Tetris v2.0]

right. safe.

I also liked the advance copy a lot more lol

Just to be clear, safe in terms of sounds and sequencing. I think he definitely went in lyrically and with concepts

 

[Ziggiy]

Don't forget Idlewild...

Best to forget Idlewild

 

[CourtesyFlush]

You're buggin. It was amazing then and has aged beautifully. 5/5

 

[CourtesyFlush]

1.)If it’s a “classic” what are classic rap songs? Kick push that’s about it


2.)I don’t think you know what revisionist history is

Bro kick push was the least classic track on the album. It's a great song but the rest are even better

 

[feelosofer]

Food and Liquor is probably Lupe's 4th best album but that is not really a knock against Lupe as much as it illustrates how much he has refined himself as an artist. It's still a very good album.

Now the advance version on the other hand

 

[SunZoo]

If we are going to keep it all the way real in this thread Lupe is a great mixtape rapper(randomly rhyming over other peoples picked classic beats) but not great at actually creating his own projects.

The only reason He doesn’t get the same criticism as other guys in this lane because he raps about the “right” things on his studio albums

The Cool was a signifigant leap ahead of F&L which is why I said as cool and important as it was, it's probably like 4th place in his whole body of work. So while that may have applied to him in the era where people were clamoring for "mixtape Lu" I don't think it does past a certain point.

He has somewhat of a niche audience yes, but he learned how to put great projects together for his listeners. T&Y is amazing IMO.