Lupe Fiasco
Drill Music in Zion
Release Date: Jun 24, 2022
Genre(s): Rap
Record label: Thirty Tigers
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Album Review: Drill Music in Zion by Lupe Fiasco
Great, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 4.1/5
Many MCs get left off best rapper lists, but none more inexplicably than Chicago-native and self-proclaimed “most black-balled rapper ever,” Lupe Fiasco. True, it may lay in his refusal to play the industry game, especially in his late career. While die-hard fans -- the same who went to war alongside him to get Lasers released over a decade ago -- have continued to hold him in high reverence, he isn’t quite as popular for younger Hip Hop listeners, which is fair.
Based on rating 3.9/5
compose yourself; like a self-aware opera The cover art for Drill Music in Zion strongly recalls 2015's Tetsuo & Youth, the second-to-last time Lupe Fiasco released a sweeping, overly ambitious concept album-slash-info-dump for Genius to lose its mind over. Unlike 2018's DROGAS Wave, justifying its absurd length by genuinely being in the realm of a magnum opus, Tetsuo & Youth overpromised and underdelivered, following up the masterpiece "Mural" with an inconsistent grab bag of styles and subject matters. Business as usual for Lupe Fiasco, one of rap's most fascinating and frustrating figures, in other words.
Based on rating 7/10
Before Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Wale or Chance the Rapper, Lupe Fiasco was mainstream hip-hop's voice of reason. Once co-signed by giants like Jay-Z and Kanye West, the Chicago native's debut three-album run is up there with one of the best of all times. From the jazzy-inspired Food & Liquor to the alt-rock in-fused The Cool to the techno-heavy Lasers, there was a period where Fiasco was undoubtedly the man.
Based on rating 7/10
A city unfairly labeled the poster child of violence is highlighted or relabeled as Zion, a place of religious fortitude and realization by Fiasco in an attempt to relay his faith via his hometown and how stereotypes mar the image of holistic stomping grounds for rap music. The album opens with a spoken word selection from poet (and Fiasco's sister) Ayesha Jaco that harps on the destructive nature of drill music ("pop that pill music, kill music") and how it leads to downfall of "lions and Zions" as they became "alley cats". For Jaco, the parasitic nature of drill music is clear cut and can only be amended by "drilling down" and working together with those in the community to clear benchmarks of oppression.
Opinion: Very Good
Lupe Fiasco has always used his voice to challenge audiences and he did not forbear as he opens his eighth studio album. A message to the message of Drill music, Jaco begins, "Drill music, pop that pill music, kill music / Desecrating the temples in the ghetto, funeral processionals increase their frequency" – a comment on the lifestyle Drill music was born out of. Let's get it straight: Lupe Fiasco's new album and its namesake is everything but Drill.
'Drill Music in Zion'
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