My Thoughts On Lupe And The Music Industry

I think Lupe brings something to the table that no other artist can offer. He's a genius when it comes to lyrics and he's able to adapt to any kind of beat. Then there are the topics he raps about. Doesn't matter if he raps about skateboarding, robots, politics or whatever else...he always manages to grab the attention of his listeners with his rhymes, because he comes up with things that no one else even thinks about.

The other thing is, that he creates albums as a whole, if it's F&L or The Cool, most of the tracks create the same kind of atmosphere, and the albums are one piece with nothing that really stands out too much and nothing that really disappoints.

Food & Liquor is over 2 years old now and I still listen to it on a regular basis....there are not a lot of albums that do the same for me, maybe some of Jay-Z's (The Black Album, RD, AG), Kanye's ( CD, Graduation), Talib's (Beautiful Struggle, Eardrum) and Common's (Be) albums are still interesting to me but besides that most of the stuff artists put out nowadays gets old after a year and doesn't really manage to keep up some kind of excitement after that.

The music industry is slowly becoming more and more of a fast food industry. The kids are able to get 5-10 new hot tracks via the net every day and then they download the albums, listen to them for a couple of weeks and then there are already a couple of other albums that get released...and so it goes on and on. Looking back at the last 2 years and the albums that have been released....how much of those do you still listen to on a regular basis ? 3....maybe 4 ?

You can't really blame the internet for it but the ones you can blame are the artists who ruin their own career with adapting to that fast food music industry. Of course you can make some quick bucks with a hot track and sell the ringtone and stuff...but who want's to buy an album full of ringtones?

Besides that...you'll never be able to build up some type of legacy like Jay-Z did if you just put out one or two hot singles each year. For a while the ringtone stuff worked quite well especially for Soulja Boy and his first album...but now look at the 2nd one..no one's really buying that anymore.

And why is it like that? Because people's minds also change....the young generation want's to get quality music again, people want to have albums that are good as a whole and not just 2-3 hot singles. A lot of artists need to understand the importance of good music again. If they would stop to care about how many records they sell and instead of just putting together one hot single, they'd start to put together one great album.....everyone should be happy.

Of course I know that there are also people from the record labels who put pressure on artists to create their music faster and to put out albums quicker which kinda ruins the quality of the music. But somehow that has to stop because in the long run everyone will appreciate a great album more than just one great song.

Maybe for some artists who are already in the game for a while it would even be worth to think about releasing their music independently, or to do what Radiohead did and let the people decide what they want to pay for an album.

Why am I writing all this? Because I think from all of the new artists that put out their debut album within the last couple of years, Lupe is almost the only one who already understood the importance of having a great and complete album in the beginning of his career. And I'm sure he'll continue with doing just that....creating great albums.

We'll find out if I'm right when the next one drops....

Thanks for reading...Sean