The latest thing in rap music is to make songs about dances. Everybody is some nouveau Chubby Checker. Young Dro wants your shoulder to lean and Them Franchise Boys want you to “lean and rock wit it”. But, that’s just an Atlanta-thing, right? Nope. The latest craze is out of Harlem, where DJ Webstar has all the Toys R’ Us Kids doing the “chicken noodle soup.” And on the other side of the nation in the Bay, e-40 wants you to “go dumb.”

It’s all kind of simple, really.

 So when Lupe Fiasco opens up his album Food and Liquor, with the acknowledgement, “My man said he wanted something real. Something he could recognize, something he could feel,” it’s like: “Yeah, we kinda do.” But, not only has “real” morphed into a cliché – an ambiguous one at that – it’s a subjective term. Reality for Lupe, son of Black Panther father and Islamic mother growing up on Chicago’s Westside, is probably a different reality than the kid of Compton or suburban Phoenix roots or the listener whose reality is the trailer parks of rural Tennessee. What Lupe brings to Hip-Hop in 2006 is not necessarily reality, but some substance and creativity and freshness. Even small doses are rarities, these days.

The first single of the album was a tune about – ostensibly – the skateboard culture. That’s not exactly the most Hip-Hop topic on the planet. Yet, here was this dude in wire rim spectacles and skater-gear fashion rhyming about the figurative travels of a guy and his skateboard. The track begins with a reflective string arrangement only heard these days in certain corners of the hop. But listen closely. After the string intro, the beat drops and you hear that familiar “boom bap, boom boom bap” – Hip-Hop to its core; and Lupe goes on to use a dude and his skateboard as an analogy for the search of love, fraternity, meaning, whatever.

 Yeah, you heard him on Kanye West’s Late Registration, turning in what may have been the album’s best verse (not exactly a Herculean feat for that album). That was a cameo, though. On grand display throughout “Kick, Push” was a new voice and personality – maybe even embryonic movement – in Hip-Hop. It was some liquid for the thirsty. Maybe not enough to quench your thirst, but definitely a start.

 Hip-Hop is no different than any other music; or American pop-culture in general, for that matter. As with most things human, there is a lemming tendency. So it can be a welcomed shock to see a new artist be different. For Lupe, it wasn’t rocket science. He said his distinction, is born out of the most simplistic essence.

 “The easiest way to separate yourself from the pack is to do you,” is what he said, on the phone in New York promoting his album.

 That phrase (‘do you.’) is a hop-favorite, right? Sometimes it means, “Don’t worry about what I’m doing -- worry about your own biz.” Other times it means simply, “Be you.” Lupe, is a devout Muslim, raised in Chicago, influenced by artists ranging from Nas to Pink Floyd, Mos Def to Crucial Conflict, Jay-Z (the album’s executive producer) to Queen. The result, he says, and after listening to the album, one would have to agree, is an album that “deals with concepts more thoroughly than a lot of kats have before.”

 The young dude has been featured in a slew of magazines leading up to this release (delayed by massive downloading of an unfinished version leaked back in June). In most of the stories he cites It Was Written as the album that bears the most influence on this effort. Nas’ second album – a seminal piece, released one week after Jay-Z’s classic debut Reasonable Doubt, but more challenging and forward than Jay’s effort –  is probably modern Hip-Hop’s landmark “concept” album, an album whose influence is still  felt today as evidenced by Lupe’s frequent reference to his reliance on Written for inspiration and direction.

 “Nas is my biggest influence in Hip-Hop, I based a lot of Food and Liquor off the moods on It Was Written,” Lupe said. “It’s more of an ‘observing album’. I’m telling other peoples’ stories. It’s conceptual.”

 Nas penned the classic, “I Gave You Power”, which was a metaphor, not only for the way he felt his style and aura was being jacked by his peers; but more famously it was written from the humanized eyes of a gun, upset with the irresponsible way people used it. Along those lines, Food and Liquor features “Daydreamin'”, a song written through the eyes of a giant robot that’s also a project-housing builder, laying and designing your typical urban cement maze fit with cocaine, scantily clad women and big guns. “Cool”, produced by Kanye West, tells the story of a resurrected drug dealer. Then there’s the social commentary of “American Terrorist”, a song the young Muslim – who vehemently denounces the tactics of Middle Eastern fundamentalist – said he wrote to open his listeners’ eyes.

 “Terrorism has been going on throughout history in every culture,” he said. “There’s been Judaic terrorism, American terrorism, secular terrorism, Christian fundamentalist terrorism. I wanted people to know about it.”

 “Don’t give the black man food, give the red man liquor. Red man – fool, Black man – nigga. Give the yellow man tool make him railroad builder, also give him pan make him pull gold from river. Give the black man crack, glocs and ‘tings. Give the red man craps, slot machines.”

 That refrain, spit during the song’s bridge, is not exactly a study of deep social and historical observations. And that might be this album’s flaw. For all of its adherence to the Nas School of Substance, the Jay-Z School of Slick and the Mos Def School of Creativity; Lupe is not on their levels. You might not even need all the fingers on one hand to count the emcees greater than Nas and Jay-Z in the annals of Hip-Hop’s 30 year history and Mos Def is as close as it gets to a Hip-Hop Renaissance Man. Yeah, Lupe is different. True, not many emcees are dropping rhymes with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles references. Sure, few are making songs like “The Instrumental” with Jonah Matranga from Sacramento-based rock group Far, a song that has a Linkin Parkesque feel to it. Like fellow Chicago emcees Kanye and Common, Lupe touches on more than a few subjects of weight, including “Hurt Me Soul” which documents his early struggle to reconcile the juxtaposed mantras that pervaded Hip-Hop (Too Short’s use of the word “bitch”, Ice Cube’s graphic admissions of drug dealing, even Jay-Z’s early hubris: “I don’t pray to God, I pray to Gotti.”) with his Islamic upbringing, one that saw him passing out Black Panther Party leaflets in Lake Shore Park. Yes, Lupe has all that. The ideas are there. It’s the execution that sometimes misses the mark. Not everyone is as capable as Nas.

 But that’s OK. These days, it’s just heartening to see a new artist even on his way to the destination Lupe seems headed for: creative, substantial, good-sounding hop.

 The album in stores has about eight new tracks not featured on the leaked version, an incentive for fans to go buy the new joint. Missing from most retail copies, but included as a bonus track on a few special versions, said Lupe, is the song “Pimp Hand”. Forget the title, though. The song is fit with a Curtis Mayfield sample, where the drum roll sounds like the hustle of a street-card shuffle and Lupe warns against getting played in various aspects of life. But at the beginning of the song he has a request: “Allow me to get my Hip-Hop on, please.”

 What?

 Not too long ago – hijacked by backpacking groups like Jurassic 5 that were heavy on the piety and light on actual bangin’ music – the term “Hip-Hop” became almost taboo within the “Hip-Hop” community. Ironic, right? But more sad than anything. The term became associated with artists, critics and fans deemed self-righteous and judgmental – haters. Yet, here is this new artist pleading with the industry to get his Hip-Hop on.

 In the 1980s, we’d say, “That’s fresh.” In the 1990s we’d say, “That’s dope.” Today, we say, “That’s wassup.”

 By all means, Sun: Get your Hip-Hop on.

  -- The Music Dude