Rap, as genres go, has not been an especially respected genre among music geeks - and when it is, other than the our beloved Kanye, it tends to be proferred to only the non-commercial hip-hop acts such as The Roots. Lupe Fiasco is perhaps an example of one of these well respected rappers - he's no Big Boi, I admit - but he has certain qualities that appeal to the music-geek in me.
Unlike most commercial rappers, Fiasco's lyrics aren't about guns, money and whores but have a certain abstract nature to them. In Dumb it Down he rants about record bosses trying to get him to dumb his lyrics down - he ends with: 'but I flatly refused I ain't dumbing down nothing'. His voice is silkily smooth and his rhythm and rhyme are immaculate, clashing cleverly with the chorus and chanting. The electronic backing is catchy and tense and the drum beat is simple an unobtrusive.
He approaches topics of education, feminism and rapping stereotypes - taking an ironic angle on them in the chorus, surrounded by the luciously verbose verses that make the song.
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