If you haven't already, be sure to purchase Lupe Fiasco's LASERS. Lupe, quite simply, is one of the best rap artists alive. Strong statement? Nah, not even a little bit… don't y'all get tired of empty lyrics and repetitious auto-tuned beats from so many rap/hip-hop artist? I know I do. So for us "un-basic" people Lupe feeds our "famished from the lack of real rap" souls. And as usual he mixes intellectual lyrics with rhythmatic alternative beats, and tops it all off with that classic Lupe style– y'all know what I mean. I can certainly hear the "slightly more mainstream than raw" sound of the music that many Lupe-heads have talked about, but this is obviously the labels doing… which I'm okay for one album– hopefully it'll open him up to a wider group of fans (which I believe is Atlantic's plan). So, the moral of the story is: purchase LASERS (amazon, itunes) and while your at it go ahead and get Food & Liquor and The Cool if those two albums are somehow not already in your ipod.

For more Lupe, check out his website.

I wanna go ahead and start the "Lupe Fiasco — Best Rap Album" Grammy 2012 campaign. As long as Andre 3000 and Cee-Lo aren't nominated as well, then my vote in that category will always be for Lupe (the) Fiasco.