Lasers

Fiasco's quite skilled at making catchy what is inherently a message many don't want to hear. He's at his most blatant, though, when he mixes his unique voice for the truth with emotional sentiments.

Oddly, Lasers is Fiasco's most commercial-sounding album – but think of it as club music with a conscience.

Lupe seems to have accepted that Lasers is not the masterpiece he originally set out to make and is prepared to move on. Maybe we should follow his lead.

While Lasers isn't the equal of its superb predecessors, there's still much here to admire; even though the fact that there isn't quite as much to love is no real surprise.

Lasers oscillates between angsty rap-metal crossover tracks laden with political platitudes and blatantly clubby, bass-thumping radio-rap jams.

Lupe remains a singular hip hop voice, and Lasers is still worth a listen.

Lupe's beats run from Nineties buoyancy to driving rap rock, but his most exciting tracks are operatic brawlers that give his athletic, whiplash flow and rich imagination room to move.

Fiasco has since gone on record as saying he both loves and hates this album. After all he went through to get it released, it's hard to blame him. But all the hard work he supposedly put into making sure Lasers remained true to his vision seems all for naught.

Here's hoping whatever Fiasco does next, it's more on his terms.

It's a moderate disappointment, then, that Lasers feels more like a compromise than a cohesive album.

Its best music shows what it might have been. The rest feels more like an obligation reluctantly met, a difficult bridge to the next phase of Lupe Fiasco's career.

So the political nails are hidden deeply enough in the candy that sometimes it's hard to tell whether the juxtaposition is truly bracingly subversive or oddly self-defeating. Depending on your mood or disposition, maybe it's neither, either or both. A musical Rorschach test if there ever was one.

There is no doubt that the first half of the album is where the "money" is – a top-heavy reflection of pop-muscle tracks where Lupe is generally playing second fiddle to the beats/choruses. That would have fine if the Chicago native had been allowed to go all out and express himself on the other six tracks, more akin to "All Black Everything" so you may well find yourself stalling after "The Show Goes On."

Lasers offers more substance when the reins are loosened.

Lasers is an expressive album, more so than his previous records.

Lasers is a chaotic album full of gummy rhymes that look better on the page than they sound to the ear, delivered with a tone of tragic bombast.

Lasers works best when the grabby hooks, electro beats, and conscious rap rants are all turned down a notch.

Lupe's half-assed, club-ready radicalism is ultimately the most frustrating thing about Lasers, and not just because it provides numerous and obvious examples of rap's self-styled emancipator consorting with his avowed enemies.

Only traces of Lupe Fiasco's greatness are present on Lasers, and even then he sounds less focused.

Lasers is more an indictment of the state of mainstream rap than anything. This is the absolute worst-case scenario of what can happen when commerce is placed above art, and in this instance it's especially offensive because Lupe is someone who doesn't need to bend over backward to be accessible.

Save for the brief reprieves of the barbed, anti-everything 'Words I Never Said' and the historical rewrite of 'All Black Everything', Lasers walks a fine line between conscious hip-hop and sleepwalking.

Instead of retaining his distinctiveness, as mainstream rap has become more like Lupe, so he's begun to sound more like everyone else on Lasers

Now it's here, and it's a bit of a letdown.

Lupe often has enough trouble staying out of his own way, yet Lasers doesn't suffer for that reason; it just feels like the flaming wreckage of a project that never had a prayer.

Obviously, Atlantic did not rape Lupe into releasing a soulless, automated, corporate record. The real irony is that Lupe's fans demanded this garbage be released.