By Taylor Drake
Can you feel the 52 fatal strikes of a punchline that made your favorite rapper’s mind spray onto the floor of the ring, he couldn’t bring the pain. Lupe Fiasco and Joey BadA$$ both released albums on Jan.22, Lupe’s 5th Tetsuo and Youth and Joey’s 1st B4.Da.$$. Hip Hop is about competition. Let’s see who’s album is better.
In the red corner, with two mixtapes and one album. Hailing from Flatbush Brooklyn, he still praying to the Gods, the Jahs and the Allahs, Joey BadA$$! In the blue corner, with nine mixtapes and five albums, from Chiraq (Chicago, Illinois), he kicked pushed his way into the arena, Lupe Fiasco!
To determine who is better, we must look at the three things that make a rap album great and the potential of being a classic: 1. lyrics, 2. possible theme, and 3. beats.
FIGHT!
Round 1: Lyrics
Joey seems to give the listener nothing but well thought out intricate verses that a master rhymer is able to write in cold blood with a toothpick. Joey dives in to yoke the joker with a verse from the song “Piece of Mind“.
"Till then I be feeling some way, Thinkin' I can get the Maybach off gun play, Instead I let the words play with 90 beats a minute, Bet the streets lose a heart beat before the verse finish..."
Lupe has massive amounts of bars, two solo songs going on for a little more than eight minutes, staying intricate and detailed with every waking moment. He blocks and pulls back for an MC derelict whippin’. The song “Mural”.
"A word game back up plan that can dam lakes Backup the wordplay playing at the man's states Mean I can still be the man if the dam breaks And when the man brakes I'm reflectious, what they can't face..."
Round 2: Concepts
The ideas behind both albums are solid through and through. Joey gives a running theme of police corruption and rebellion and also plenty of personal information; the song “No.99” is the perfect example of this and “Curry Chicken” talks about being able to take care of his mom.
But, Lupe is able to mesmerize with endless concepts and ideas, there are even rumors that say that the album played backward is a sequel to his second album, The Cool. But ultimately gives you a strong biblical theme, toward the end focusing on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
Round 3: Beats
Instrumentals for Joey are usually jazzy or grimy with great detail to them, made by producers like DJ Premier and Statik Selektah. The only beat that didn’t work so well was “Escape 120”, Joey didn’t perform well over this beat. Lupe on the other hand was able to rap well overall beats and has a giant range of instrumentation, using four interludes as “palate cleansers” according to Lupe in an interview on SKEE TV.
The Results
With the blows taken from the constant barrage of metaphors, similes and concepts, Joey BadA$$ is currently in a state between nothingness and “Christ Conscious”. There is a nine out of ten chance that he will recover and proceed to the next level.
Tetsuo and Youth wins by 10 16th chapel paintings out of 10 copies of What’s Going On. A masterstroke.