Album Review: Lupe Fiasco, Samurai
Lupe Fiasco
Samurai (released June 28, 2023)
Gather round, children, allow me to tell you the story of Yasuke, the man recognized as the only African samurai.
According to legend, he first arrived to Japan to serve priest Alessandro Valignano. Word of his exploits would make their way to Japanese daimyō Oda Nobunaga, who hired him as a samurai and gave him the name Yasuke.
He’d serve Nobunaga until the daimyō’s death. After that, his legacy became lost to time.
In more recent years, Yasuke would become a cult figure, with a 2021 Netflix anime reimagining his exploits. The Afro Samurai manga and anime are also based on him. It’s cool to see such a powerful and mysterious Black figure getting props, even if it’s way overdue.
A lone warrior whose exploits have been too long overlooked? No wonder Lupe Fiasco relates.
I’ve said it many times before, and I’ll continue to say it here – everything that we celebrate J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar for today, Lupe was doing at an equally high level (arguably, even higher) a half-decade earlier.
But instead of rehashing what could have been, Lupe seems focused on his present. After the success of 2022’s Drill Music in Zion, Lupe unsheathes Samurai, an album cut from the same jazzy cloth as its predecessor.
In terms of production, Drill Music in Zion felt like a throwback to the glory days of A Tribe Called Quest, but with more biting bars and deliberate storytelling. Samurai keeps that feeling alive.
Smile wide, I got the panoramic camera vibe
If you analyze she’s a one-woman gala, glamorized
Just without the glamour or the gala ties
Man I’m more alive with the jazz guys eating piano pies
At the Vanguard
She’s an artist and starved
As great as Tribe is, nobody on the roster was spitting like this.
That opening title track is pure Lupe, effortless yet intricate wordplay that rivals your favorite rap legend.
There’s a difference between being a great rapper and being a great lyricist. Lupe is the blueprint for that.
That’s the story of Samurai – no rap features, no frills, just one man on a mission to cut down the competition.
I’m a pretty big Lupe fan, but even I first struggled when I first heard most recent single “Cake.” It takes a second to digest his double time flow, but once those bars start rolling in, you can’t help but hang on his every word:
My delivery shivers like Siberian areas
Shippers slip on the slickest icicles drip from the tip of my scriptures
If you a ship on a trip, don’t hit on the tip of my glacier
Swim with the fish and flippers, I finish my pictures
This isn’t music you can skim through. Each song is a rubix cube that takes a few minutes to decipher. But once those colors start aligning, you can’t beat that feeling of accomplishment.
Samurai’s production is slightly more adventurous that Drill Music in Zion, which benefits the experience. “No. 1 Headband” is an elegant backdrop for even more elegant wordplay (“gentrified different sides like geminis/energize the starship Enterprise”). “Palaces” is more melancholy, but that’s intentional as Lupe weights his mortality and legacy:
Lord bless my palace of bones
My soul calls my skeleton home, it’s on the phone
Give the receiver back to Tyrone, we made a pact
N**** we goin’ home
That theme continues on “Bigfoot,” as Lupe gives us a glimpse into the mind of an artist before rocking a crowd, and the insecurities that linger – “there are times I wish I had a mask, like I’m Daft.”
At just eight tracks, the margin for error here is razor thin. The only song that doesn’t quite hit the mark is “Outside” – the bars are hard as always, the hooks is just a bit unmemorable.
Much like Yasuke after his master’s death, the way of the samurai is lonely. Lupe serves no master and, as he says on the closing track “Til Eternity,” “you can’t have harvest before the hardship.” You can feel the weight of Samurai in every track but he seems content to walk this path alone.
But can you blame him? In realm of hip-hop, Lupe has no peers. He just wanders to the next challenge, slaying all opposition.
Don’t wait until they make an anime about him generations later. Appreciate his legend now.
Best tracks: “Palaces,” “No.1 Headband,” “Til Eternity”
4 stars out of 5
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