Part 1: Rhetorical Situation
1.
Based on your album,
find the following information (use at least 2 different sources to gather your
information- don't count wikipedia as one. Use that as a starting
point). Take extensive notes here. Use this as a brainstorming and
research tool to get as much info related to your album as possible.
1.
Context: Lupe Fiasco’s
“The Cool” album was released in 2007. “The Cool picks up right where "Food & Liquor" left
off, once again using his Muslim background and Chi-Town sensibilities to
inform his perspective without being rigidly bound by either. “
--Rapreviews.com
in a Muslim family on February 17, 1982, Wasalu
Muhammad Jaco aka Lupe
Fiasco was the fifth child out of nine siblings. His father is an engineer
as well as an apt drummer while his mother is a gourmet chef. Little Fiasco was
raised in Westside of Chicago and pursued his education at Illinois' Thornton
Township High School. Rapping had gone into his head while he was still very
young, but gangsta rap was popular during the time that he was intimidated by
the profane lyrics produced by the rappers at that time. Thus he gave up
rapping as a career choice. ((Culture influence))
However, when he heard Nas'
1996 album, "It
Was Written", Fiasco was dumbstruck and instantly attracted to the art
of rapping. At 19 years old he had formed a rapping group called Da Pak that
were signed by Epic Records and released a single. Unfortunately, the group
split up just after they were about to begin but fortunately for Fiasco who
chose to go solo after that.
He immediately signed to Arista Records but when chairman and CEO Anthony
"L.A." Reid stepped down from the position, he too had to quit from
the label. Refusing to stop in the track, Fiasco recorded a number of mixtapes
and began uploading them on-line. Soon enough he was a quite popular Internet
artist that his work was heard by renown rapper Jay-Z.
His appearance in Mike Shinoda's mixtape "Fort Minor: We Major"
landed in the hand of Jay-Z who later on offered Fiasco to join his Roc-A-Fella
label. Since Fiasco had already started mixing, releasing singles and gained
money from it, he had enough preparation to start his own record label. Thus he
turned down the offer from Jay-Z to start 1st and 15th Entertainment which is
an imprint of Atlantic Records.
Through his own label, Fiasco released his debut studio album called "Food and Liquor".
The album became a major success, gaining as much as four nominations at the
2007 Grammy Awards. Fiasco, by then was acknowledged as one of the rappers who
was closely associated to A-listers in Hip-Hop community such as Kanye West, Pharrell Williams
and Jill Scott.
Together with the first two musicians he formed a supergroup called Child Rebel
Soldiers who spawned many mixtapes.
He released an album called "The Cool"
that proved to be another hit for him through two strong singles called
"Dumb
-@aceshowbiz on Twitter
1.
Purpose
1.
Telling his story
So your 2007 album, The Cool, is a concept album right?
Yeah,
lightly, though. There are 3 characters. There's The Streets, The
Cool and The Game. So there's "The Coolest", there's
"Streets on Fire" and there's "Put You On Game" and then
there's another record called "The Die" which is the death of The
Cool. I thought that the story was so vivid that as opposed to just basically
acting all cool and you see me dressed up as the Fonz or something like that.
I
think it was more the story of those characters and that resurrected hustler,
that sort of personification of street life and the personification of the
game. I thought that would be fresh; to make that overriding concept really
push.
--Lupe
fiasco
Lupe Fiasco's The Cool expands on the story Lupe told on the track, "The
Cool", from his debut
album. Fiasco introduces the characters the Streets and the
Game.[5] The album tells the story of the little boy from "He
Say, She Say" who grew up without a father, and the people that step in to
raise him are the Streets and the Game,[6] with The Streets playing his female love interest and The
Game his father.[7] Speaking on the concept Lupe said:
I expand on the story, I introduce two other
characters, the Game and the Streets. The Streets is a female. She's like the
action personification of the streets, the street life, the call of the
streets. The Game is the same way. The Game is the personification of the game.
The pimp's game, the hustler's game, the con man's game, whatever. Then they've
got supernatural characteristics. Like the Cool, his right hand is rotted away.
The only thing that rotted away was his right hand. It represents the rotting
away of his righteousness, of his good. And the Streets and the Cool kind of
have a love affair going on. So she's represented by this locket. And the
locket has a key and it's on fire. And as a gift to the Cool on his rise to
fame, she gave him the key. And the key represents the key to the Streets. So
she wears a locket around her neck at all times. And the way the story goes,
she has given that key to tons of people throughout time. Al Capone, Alexander
the Great, whatever. She's giving them the key to the Streets. Fame and
fortune — but also the prices. The Game, he's represented by a
stripped-down skull, a skull with dice in his eyes and smoke coming out of his
mouth. The billowing smoke is actually crack smoke. It's not a full concept
album; it's more spread over like five [tracks], really abstractly.[8]
--Lupe
Fiasco (methodshop.com)
Audience
1.
intended audience :
males and females 18-35
2.
unintended audience :
males and females 18 and under
3.
audience demographics,
etc.
2.
Genre
1.
Hip Hop
Since its emergence in the 1980s, rap and hip-hop music has grown from an
underexposed form of expression into a way for people of all backgrounds to
shed light on their lives through rhythm and poetry. Pioneering rappers, such
as Jay-Z, Queen Latifah and the Beastie Boys, helped spark the fire for rap to
grow into the hot genre that it is today. Browse through a collection of famous
rappers who influenced the hip-hop scene.
-
Biography.com
“The thing about hip-hop is that it’s from the underground, ideas
from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not
been recognized.” -Russell Simmons, co-founder of Def Jam Recordings - See more
at:
http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/what-is-hip-hop.shtml#sthash.J96LiU9z.dpuf
Hip-hop started in the South Bronx.
Hip hop singers, and break dancing was a way to be heard without violence. It
is also said that Hip hop and even graffiti was a way to speak out against
putting up the South Bronx express way. Graffiti was intentionally put on the
trains so that it would be seen throughout New York. People wanted to be heard.
