Consider

There have been moments where it has seemed either Lupe was ahead of his time or at least prophetic.

“All Black Everything” feels as if it arrived a few years early, a song that in tone and content sounds like it was forged during the time of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the revival of AfroFuturism. It also feels closer to what we’d heard from Lupe pre-lasers. Conceptual, layered meanings with strong word play and story-telling. Like Wakanda before him, Lupe imagined a world where black people were not chattel, and our land not touched by colonial powers. He imagines a what if and the possibilities of a free black people.

Uh, and we ain’t get exploited White man ain’t fear it so he did not destroy it We ain’t work for free, see they had to employ it

Built it up together so we equally appointed First 400 years, see we actually enjoyed it Constitution written by W.E.B. Du Bois Were no reconstructions, civil war got avoided

In this reality foes are friends and the constructs that were created to oppress black people are literally turned inside out.

Extra extra on the newsstands Black woman voted head of Ku Klux Klan Malcolm Little dies as an old man Martin Luther King read the eulogy for him Followed by Bill O’Reilly who read from the Qu’ran President Bush sends condolences from Iran Where Fox News reports live That Ahmadinejad wins the Mandela Peace Prize

In the following verse, his alternate universe means that the very inspirations and tropes of commercial rap don’t even exist.

Uh, and it ain’t no projects

Keepin’ it real is not an understood concept

Yeah, complexion’s not a contest

‘Cause racism has no context

Hip-hop ain’t got a section called “Conscious”

Everybody rappin’ like crack never happened

Crips never occurred nor Bloods to attack them

Matter of fact, no hood to attack in Somalia is a great place to relax in

Fred Astaire was the first to do a backspin

The Rat Pack was a cool group of black men

That inspired five white guys called The Jacksons

A subtle message Lupe conveys is showing how the world is built on artificial constructs of identity. So much of our culture and understanding is filtered through identities that are artificial and superficial. What if we removed them? What would change if the constructs never existed? Everything.

I cordially invite you to ask why can’t it be

Now we can do nothing about the past

But we can do something about the future that we have

We can make it fast or we can make it last

Every woman queen and every man a king and

When those color lines come we can’t see between

We just close our eyes ‘til its all black every-thing

In the larger scheme of Lupe’s career, Lasers is a turning point in a sense. A cynicism arises from the battles fought and won by him during this time. The fight for his professional freedom, the struggles to overcome the personal tragedies of the recent past. Instead of being a breaking point, it ultimately proved to be a launching pad for Lupe to go deeper and even further than he had before to express himself.