Lasers Is Fucked

Lupe Fiasco recently did an interview with complex.com and in it he has some very interesting and ultimately disappointing things to say about the future of his was-to-be third album, Lasers. Two weeks ago Lupe personally released a song, Go To Sleep, and stated it was for the album Food and Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album. It was certainly perplexing to see Lupe release a song for his supposed fourth album, when his third album wasn't even in stores yet. This interview sheds a lot of light on that issue, you can read it in it's entirety here, I will try and present the relevant quotes in this post. Basically, it might be time for us Lupe fans to start coming to terms with the fact that Lasers may never see the light of day.

Complex: You mentioned Japanese Cartoon being your Plan B, let’s talk about Plan A. A second ago, you said “If Lasers never comes out.” Will it not come out?

Lupe Fiasco: It could. The situation with me and my record company has gotten to the point where it’s just like…we’re really at our final straws. People could say it’s me, that “Lupe doesn’t want to make popular music” or “The label has got to have records that they can sell and Lupe is not giving them the records they want to sell” and XYZ.

Complex: You keep referring to it as Lasers, but on the Internet now people are saying the record could be called Food and Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album. Is that not a real title?

Lupe Fiasco: When I said that I was going to do an album called The Great American Rap Album, I did it. Lasers is one project on its own. It’s its own project, sitting being done, waiting to be released. Lasers is its own project, it is its own sound, its own mood. Food and Liquor II is completely different. It’s like Lasers, that’s one album that got disrupted in the business process. It’s a great album, but that album may not come out. But here’s Food and Liquor II.

Sigggghhhh, needless to say this entire situation frustrates the hell out of me. It's hard to say who's to blame but I can't help but feel Atlantic is mostly responsible. It shouldn't be this hard for an artist who, with his last album, was certified Gold in a record industry climate not exactly conducive to selling albums, to get a release date. My only theory as to why Atlantic is holding out on Lupe is because he passed on Airplanes and Nothing On You. Bobby Ray's smash hits were actually intended to be Lupe songs. Lupe didn't want them because he wouldn't have owned a major percentage of their publishing and maybe because they were pre-packaged pop songs written for 15 year old white girls. Should he be punished for that decision? Probably not, but in today's music industry where labels are looking for a couple of Billboard blockbusters instead of a cohesive 15 song album with a unifying concept, Lupe and Lasers were shelved because B.O.B. got Haley Williams to sing a hook on a song.
With that said, Lupe probably shouldn't have began hyping this album in March of 0(FUCKING!)9. We now know that he probably jumped the gun on it a little bit and gave fans some false hope, but come on Atlantic throw us a fucking bone here.
The one bright spot in all of this is that Go To Sleep, the one song he has released off Food and Liquor II, is fucking flames, and something you should all listen to.

Only another two years guys!

Lasers Being Potentially Shelved - Worst Thing of All-Time
Go To Sleep - Sooo Sick