Songs of the Year - #3 Go To Sleep (WHAT NOW LOUIS?!)

Seeing as how the Crick has been dormant for months again I've decided to pick up the keyboard and start writing again. With Louis taking 15 classes this semester in order to graduate on time and Scotty void of a laptop I'm afraid all six of you will have to put up with my personal thoughts and opinions. With my recent move to the mile high city and no job I've been doing all kinds of introspection and could spill my deepest thoughts and inner demons to you all, but instead I'll probably just stick to talking about rap music. Considering the year is coming to a close I thought of this ingenious idea to rank the best songs that have been released within the past 12 months. Coming in at #3 is Lupe Fiasco's best offering in a long while: Go To Sleep.

Louis does not like this song, which is fine, ya dink ya donk you don't like a song. But a song riddled with such impressive wordplay and lyricism deserves to be praised and I am here to do just that. Go To Sleep is loosely based on Lupe's struggles to release meaningful and important music. He is at odds with the landscape of mainstream rap. Sick of it's perpetual mindlessness he wants to awake the listeners from the constant drivel they are subjected to. Unfortunately for him he is one step ahead of us, "baking eggs and pancakes eating that at midnight," and ends each impressive verse claiming he wont make a noise. A surrender of sorts allowing us to submerge ourselves back into the bullshit music we love so much.

What makes the song work is the fact that all three verses are rife with double entendres and slick wordplay that remind us why Lupe is one of the greatest wordsmiths rap has ever seen. The first verse contains this bit of fuego:

"But they can’t see me, I took out their eyes/I's
Replaced them with some mes, so all they see is hes
But I will never run, not even if they cry
See, I can never fall, not even down their cheek
But I will always ball/bawl, let’s see who the first to blink"

The extended theme of eyes and tears carries itself through these several bars, and may not be known to the listener after only one listen.

"Fill this bitch up with fans, you still wont blow my candle out"

"Won’t drill no door hole, I won’t make a peep, so you can go to sleep"

I'm sure you all have already caught the double meanings in those lines, and if not it's nothing Rap Genius can't explain. This is the type of lyricism that redeems the listener after repeated listens, and therefore lengthens replay value yet somewhere along the lines these writing methods have come to be considered corny or pretentious amongst some rap fans, the very ones Lupe is trying to awake. Yes, Lupe does try to hard at times to be complex, this is not one of those times. Those bars came off effortlessly within the context and flow of the song.

The third verse takes a bit of a somber turn. It contains a reference to Lupe's drug dealing past. While Lupe was never as overt as Jay-Z or 50 Cent were when it came to talking about dealing his music contains many discreet admissions of at one time being involved in the drug trade ("I'm nuts with the cain/cane, planters planters," "You see what I'm saying and I push keys/kis wonderfully"). I don't think Lupe enjoys talking about this subject in his raps anymore but he once again uses wordplay to disguise his confession.

"Close down all the opium, but I had to O-P-EN
They said they need a hero in/heroin it, so I'm back to dope again"

Many Lupe fans have been hoping for a return to his crazy lyrical ways of his early career, in other words asking for a hero. Lupe harks back to his old days ("time is all behind me, this make me feel old again") of drug references and uses heroin as a vehicle to convey the message that he is back to being a "dope" emcee. I'm not sure if he ever really fell off, but Go To Sleep is a welcome return to form.

All of this takes place over a ridiculous 1500 or Nothing beat that builds and builds in the third verse coalescing with Lupe's words to create an epic crescendo of sound and message.