The band's debut sports more rough edges while the second act presents a much slicker '80s-throwback sound. As for the music, the Protomen mix country, vintage synths, and noise rock into their sound.
The tag line writes itself: It's Les Miserables with robots. Their take on the Megaman franchise as half family drama, half dystopia. Only the bold embark on a career-spanning rock opera, but the Protomen pull it off, thanks in no small part to their knack for wringing serious emotion out of shallow pop culture. The Protomen are what happens when the rock opera goes viral: Nine college students record a song about the Megaman videogames on the night before their final project is due, and that one recording spirals into a touring independent rock opera with a ferocious Internet fanbase. This adaptation could even be a smart career option for Lupe if Food And Liquor II fails as a return to form. Many arrangements on The Cool sport lush string sections as well as big electric beats. Lupe's large cadre of male and female guest singers opens up diverse cast options. Its multifaceted exploration of urban culture is reminiscent of Rent and Moving Out. His stint as a mafioso cheeseburger in "Gotta Eat" stands out, as does his ice-cold Mephistopheles in "Put You On Game."Ī staged version of The Cool could be as past-meets-present as its premise. But the finest moments on The Cool come when Lupe goes bad. Lupe becomes every aspiring rapper that has ever been or will be, and along the way writes some of his most heartfelt numbers "Hip Hop Saved My Life" is so earnest that any lesser emcee would make it laughable. Lupe's characters in The Cool all strive for greatness, and face a choice between different sorts of good and evil. There's no shortage of Faust retellings in pop culture (in fact there's another in this list), but Lupe's interpretation mixes in equal parts allegory and autobiography. And for one album, he bested his colleague's theatricality. Except Lupe's lyrics were smarter, his attitude was more nuanced, his rhymes were both quicker and wittier. Immediately after The Cool dropped, an air of excitement just followed the man around - much like the one that surrounded Kanye West after the release of The College Dropout. Once upon a time Lupe Fiasco was the Next Big Thing in "conscious" hip-hop.
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