Tetsuo & Youth

One of the most significant facts about Lupe’s fifth album is that it would be his final on Atlantic Records. By this stage, Lupe also has distanced himself from traditional and popular media, more and more utilizing social media platforms such as Twitter and directly communicating to and with fans through his website and blogs as a means to continue his dialogue and discourse when off-record. The tone and feel of the album also harkens to some of the more abstract leanings of earlier Lupe records. The epic “Murals” stands as an opus and one of the most overt examples of the deft lyricism and abilities of Lupe as a writer. Clocking in at almost eight minutes, with no hook and a rousing orchestral beat behind him, Lupe delivers entendre after entendre, pun after pun, and speeding through a myriad of topics like a drunken driver through traffic lights. The album features four instrumental interludes named after the seasons, which loosely gives the feel of the changing of the mood of the records that precede and succeed each. Lupe’s typical topics are on display and, as in the postLasers era, features various guests and a subtle pop aesthetic. To his credit, Lupe doesn’t sacrifice his own dexterity for the sake of style, but without question this record very much pulls from the formula that created Lasers.

From the very beginning

Lupe’s biggest concerns, harshest critique and deepest appreciations have been saved for black people and the community he grew up in. In classic Lupe fashion, the song concept serves as a metaphor to highlight the disparities between those in the hood and everyone else.

The first verse uses repetition and remarks on the general state of “the ghetto”, (Pow)

30-something shots from the ghetto gun

All in the ears of the ghetto young

Some ghetto girls, some ghetto sons

Throwing rocks at the bus and other ghetto fun

I always wondered where the ghetto from Cause I’m from the ghetto, the never ghetto come

Buzz you in if the bell of my ghetto rung

And if the ghetto lose, that mean a ghetto won

That’s how they do the ghetto, that’s how the ghetto done

They keep it, they never bring the ghetto none

What make the ghetto tick, make the ghetto run

What make the ghetto sick, make the ghetto dumb

These niggas off that ghetto beer and that ghetto rum

And that ghetto bass with my ghetto drums

And my ghetto words and these ghetto problems get ghetto sums

That’s why...

As he lays out the conditions of “the hood” in this verse, the hook gives us the consequences

The pizza man don’t come here no more

Too much dope, too many niggas on the porch

So the pizza man don’t approach (no, no, no)

Pizza man don’t come here no more

Too many niggas on the block, too many niggas getting shot

So the pizza man don’t stop (pow, pow, pow)

The pizza man don’t come here no more

Too many niggas getting robbed, niggas don’t wanna starve

But “Niggas ain’t got no jobs, blah blah blah”

The pizza man don’t come here no more Deliver, deliver, deliver

Lupe starts the second verse asking the question “Is it cause they’re selling nicks out there all day/Cause a prostitute sucking dick in the hallway?” He then proceeds to name check pizza chains that won’t come to the hood. It’s here where he goes into more details about why the hood exists and whose it for.

Little Caesar’s never sending pizza out y’all way

Papa Johns never get delivered where y’all stayed

The ghetto was a physical manifestation

Of hate in a place where ethnicity determines your placement

A place that defines your station

Remind you niggas your place is the basement White people in the attic Niggas selling dope, White people is the addicts White folks act like they ain’t show us how to traffic

All that dope to China, you don’t call that trappin’?

Breaking Bad, learned that from a TV

So don’t say it’s politics when you see me

When you gon’ apologize for your CD Nigga, that don’t match red and black to a GD

His third verse is where he puts the moral and his hopes. These are the types of verses that, for some, have given Lupe the reputation of being preachy, but there is a deeper idea at play. He again imagines an alternative way of being and thinking despite the conditions that he and his people were placed in,

Can I get delivered from the sin?

Get a little slice of Heaven, I can enter in again

Or maybe just imagine that I’m living in a mansion

Or a palace and my pizza gets delivered in a Benz

Make a savior out of savage like they made it out of magic

So it take a nigga havoc and it make it into friends

An interesting juxtaposition, as the song continues, is Lupe’s use of the slang for money (“Salad”) implies that the pursuit of money, and material goods is the root of the problem and the solution.

You don’t even need a salad, it don’t make a nigga fatter

Actually take a nigga backwards and make a nigga thin

That’s a deep dish, Chicago style get the peace stick

Home run hitter, I be drilling on the weak pitch

Pay into the plate then I put it in your face

I’m a man, never biting on the hands that I eat with No Giordano or DiGiorno

Homemade Bull City bring it to him like a toro

This leaves us to ponder (as maybe Lupe is) how does his hood get delivered from the low place that it is in? The open endedness of the song suggests, not an artist on a soapbox in the pulpit, but a thinker asking questions and presenting what he observes. The power of Lupe is creating the conversation through the use of something as mundane and common as take out delivery that also highlights the inhumanity that exists within his community.

We get a quintessential song from Lupe with “Prisoner 1 & 2”. The extensive metaphor of prison both speaks to the unjust prison system, but also the unjust music industry. Both are bad business, and both typically trap young black people with little way out. The song opens with a skit depicting a collect call to an undisclosed prison, then shifts to a clip of Fela Kuti discussing the power of music. The song begins as we meet “Prisoner 1”. In the first verse Lupe slowly unfurls a cloaked account of someone who is sent to prison, Lupe makes allusions to different types of crimes, and hints at the injustice of pedophiles and protesters finding more justice than a hustler from the streets.

Best laid plan, make a mess, made Damnation, let’s play hands, sans spades That’s without, a boycott and a sit-out Afro-Black pick in with a fist out

From the “Welcome Home” to the kick out Reach into a rabbit, pull a trick out Preacher preaching to a faggot with his dick out Hard times call for armed time, hmm Sick, sick, sick eyes from the nose pressure

The second verse continues describing the inhumane conditions of a traditional prison. The loss of privacy and personal freedom, the rigidity of schedule and the constant threat of violence by C-O and inmates alike.

Getting slammed from the protest, no food

Force fed him like OB with a nose tube

Visions say consult the yogi with the gold shoes

With the Rollie going bowling for the old school

(Yeah) I need more for the Michaels

That’s a loss for the class and a score for the rifles

Three hots and a cot and some cops

Trying to find dinosaurs in the Bible

It’s all quiet in the jailhouse

Then they ride in to find the empty cells out

They was looking for the swords

They was looking for the swords

The verse’s narrative shifts then to the protagonist’s survival. Fighting to retain that humanity amidst the horrible conditions. They seek man’s law, then God’s law, to confront the evils around them. Lupe’s depiction highlights the almost impossible position one is left when locked in a cage surrounded by evil.

Looking in the library, looking at the law

10 years deep, now I’m looking at the bar

Claim sovereignty cause I’m bunkin’ with the Moors

They degenerate, they ain’t looking at the game

They just looking at the scores, they be putting on my books

Cause I’m looking at the stars, trade a shank for some crank

Now I’m looking at a war, BGF got the yard

AB got the kitchen, snitches on PC M&M on a mission but C.O.’s got the prison God got us all, God set us free

God is the key, but the guards got the doors

The initials in this final verse refer to the Black Guerilla Family, Aryan Brotherhood, Protective Custody, Mexican Mafia and Corrections Officers. Four of those five represent some of the traditional gangs and power brokers inside of prison. The end of the verse simply underlines that significance of danger and despair that one faces in prison.

Verse three continues to underline the conditions and describes more of the horrific conditions and circumstances the nameless protagonists face. Lupe’s long form third person narrative builds on itself to give us a full picture of the true cost of prison. From being under constant threat of being attacked and being placed in solitary confinement

Punching on the glass

Scared that some killer might fuck him in the ass

Staff getting rigid, wasn’t gon’ take away the visits

Segregate niggas by theyself and make ‘em stay with it

Wicked, swung the shank around on a mop string

They had to pull him out the cell with a SWAT team

That’s a cop team

To the realities of life with no parole, the death penalty and the psychological effects of that reality. They made electric chairs for his dying days

Last meals, no appeals for him to try and stay

On Death Row like Suge and the late Pac

Maybe he could dig a tunnel outta A Block

And wear gloves for the razor-wired gate top

Scared thugs going crazy in a caged box

Looking at the world through the TV

And they gone, rapping over beats from the tabletops

Ay! That’s how it is in a police state

When your life is just a number and release date When you’re rehabilitated so correctly

And let’s hope that’s how you’re living when you’re set free

It’s at this point, we again here the skit depicting the collect call to the prisoner, and immediately after Ayesha, Lupe’s sister, who's featured previously on his albums, delivers a spoken word piece to set up “Prisoner 2”

The orange wings of the new Jim Crow

Are dyed Klansman sheets and court papers

Dreadlocks nooses hang from his neck as the new Jim Crow Corporations feed him seeds yet unborn

He’ll be captured by Maya in a rubyencrusted cage

I see the light at the end of the tunnel

And answers that I leave in empty pages to be written

Where is your pen? The new Jim Crow

(The new Jim Crow, the new Jim Crow, Crow, Crow, Crow, Crow)

Lupe’s verse reveals that in fact it is the CO that is the “other” prisoner. Ayesha’s allusion to a new Jim Crow highlights the prison industrial complex, with its dyed Klansman sheets and court papers. Lupe opens telling us how the officers “sell their souls and themselves” and laments.

You just like us, til’ your shift get through

You could look like us, you know shit get through

You should be in cuffs like us, you should get strike two

You should get like life, you should get like woo!

You should get that twice, you should get refused

The open road, that’s no parole, and no control

Over your own soul, so control

Your own remote control that your folks can hold

For Lupe, their crime is participating in this unjust and racist system, and their sentence should be served in the same manner as the “prisoners” they guard. The final verse goes on to describe the backstory of the anonymous C.O. drawing parallels between his small town upbringing in a lower income environment that presses him into his profession, as a “prison” in and of itself.

5th year with the DOC

Do you see what’s the C.O. see?

Robocop opt to his C-O-P

Three hots and a C-O-T

Lived in a small town, his whole life like the hole, right?

Either working at the prison, or it’s no lights

In the system working with the police

In the prison stripping niggas phone rights

Got a malice, on the other side of the bars

Watching niggas get smart, watching niggas get strong

Watching niggas get home, he jail us

But deep down he jealous

Lupe’s ability to draw connections and show the dimensions and layers of inhumanity that exist in the prison structure in this song is evident in the time he takes to address the primary players within that system (guard and prisoner). The song clocks in at almost nine minutes, and it is what we’ve seen and expected of Lupe for much of his career. Storytelling in long form, filled with allusions, irony and metaphor. Whenever possible Lupe forgoes traditional formats (this song not only boasts five verses, but a bridge and two separate hooks along the way) when he wishes to tackle a topic in depth. Overall, his swan song with Atlantic records in a sense feels like a renaissance to the Lupe of his beginnings. Experimental, uncompromising and completely unconventional.

You a prisoner too, you living here too

Never left like soundin’