Live Wired [Review]: Lupe Fiasco

posted in: Reviews & Playlists • Urban

In this week’s edition of Live Wired, we’re switching things up a little bit. We’ve featured show review of fun and laid-back summer concerts such as Guster and Jack’s Mannequin and The Weepies. This time, we’re bringing you our thoughts on and a look into the “Generation Laser” tour, Lupe Fiasco’s twenty-date trek around the country this fall. On Monday, we caught the first night of this tour at a jam-packed House of Blues. Fiasco, the rapper hailing from Chicago, entered the stage to chants of “Lupe”, which continued throughout the night.

The first half of the show was by far the best. The energy in the room was high, the crowd knew every word to every song and Lupe captivated everyone with upbeat and exciting performances of some of his best tracks. He opened with “Words I Never Said”, the second song off of his album Lasers. It definitely set the tone for the night, with Lupe rapping the verses fueled by his political views and his back-up vocalists contributing with the song’s sing-along chorus. While most of his set consisted of content from Lasers, his latest album which was released back in March, an early highlight of the set was an older song, “Go Go Gadget Flow”. The crowd loved rapping the repetitive and easy to remember chorus, and Fiasco even changed the words around at the end to make the song about Boston.

As the night went on, the set stayed just as exciting and fast paced. Lupe even treated the crowd to a couple of verses of “Touch The Sky”, a song that he collaborated with Kanye West on, for the album Late Registration. He certainly didn’t disappoint with his performance of “Kick Push”, one of his first major hits from his first album Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor. While it isn’t as high energy as some of his other material, it’s a great hip hop song that translated great live, with the crowd moving along to the beat. It seems like no show would be complete without the performer introducing one of their songs by asking “Where are all the ladies tonight?” followed by too many high-pitched screams. Despite this, “Out Of My Head” was one of the highlights of the night and it was impossible not to dance and sing along.

The one downside to the night was the amount of time wasted on Lupe’s political rants. He’s notorious for candidly expressing his extreme views. He easily could’ve performed two or three more songs in the time it took him to tell the crowd he wasn’t trying to discuss politics, but then did so anyway. It definitely was not necessary and disrupted the energy of the night. But the show ended on a high note with performances of two of his biggest hits, “Superstar” and “The Show Goes On”.

Check out the rest of the dates on this tour here!