Dear Lupe:

When I first saw this video on Allhiphop.com, I thought "Oh fuck you, you haughty prat, I hope your album fails." Lupe IS good, but in a Jay-Z way (although his catalog is already better than Jay's consistency-wise), where he thinks or proclaims himself to be a lot greater than he really is. They both seem to think crazily over-thought metaphors and over-compressing thoughts into rhymes somehow makes you a "genius" or "better rapper", not understanding that only Wu-Tang and Busdriver seem pull off that level of lyrical complexity. More often than not, Jay, and all of his clones and disciples, and apparently that may include Lupe, drops embarrassing clunkers with a "Isn't this shit hot, B?" attitude.

Nah, B. It ain't.

Still, despite the confusion between depth and convolution, they're both good. And I have to, about three months later, give it up even more to Lupe. The Cool is great (with flaws, but still, great), and as of Sunday morning, I finally understood "Dumb It Down". And goddamit, he was right. I have to admit that I was on the allhiphop.com message boards shitting all over Lupe's lyrics. I still stand by all of my criticisms of this Jay-Z model of deluson, but I was wrong about "Dumb It Down", and it wasn't until listening to it at 1 AM Sunday morning in Queens getting ready for my trip, that the "and I'm___-less" scheme and his seemingly nonsensical building upon that in each verse clicked. And I did feel pretty dumb at that moment.

"Ohhhhhhhhhh...why didn't I notice that before...'dumb' as both dumbing down for his audience, as well as the physical condition of being 'dumb', being kind of a vegetable and being deprived of your basic senses! Like what he's saying in the song! Oh shit."

So, I have to say, I fell for it.

My bad.

I won't be making many posts for the majority of January, until I come back to the US around the 17, but Fuck I Look Like will be back then. Unless I'm lying and continue to post from this laptop.