Lupe Fiasco knows how to rap. His ability to string words together, and tease out double and triple meanings is mostly unrivaled, even if his instrumental choice has been inconsistent over the years. The commonly held belief is that if Lupe picks a good beat, the song will follow suit. “LLC” is another prime example of this belief. The Chicago emcee gets down to business on a short and sweet track that has enough wordplay to keep the experts at Genius busy for the rest of the week.
There’s a lot going on in terms of rhyme scheme. Lupe doesn’t waste a second of the track’s sub-three minute runtime and dishes out bars about being misinterpreted and being “conscious” and “woke” like a person who suffers from sleep paralysis. That’s the sort of wordplay we’d save for the “Quotable Lyrics” but there’s no shortage to choose from on “LLC.” There’s an impressive run about likening his rhyming to an earthquake, and a line where he makes reference to 1930s dancing star Fred Astaire. It’s safe to say few rappers are out here doing it like Lupe. The production is simple but tasteful.
Lupe has been a minor talking point as of late, as J. Cole’s apology to Kendrick Lamar has drummed up past instances in which rappers have made peace with K. Dot. Lupe famously gave the Compton emcee his flowers after claiming he could out-rhyme him in 2018… or so we thought. Lupe recently hopped on X to clarify that he did not actually apologize to Lamar. “I wasn’t apologizing to him lol,” he wrote in a since-deleted post. “I was sorry about the entire shindig because it was such a waste of time and energy in something that had nothing to do with me.” Regardless of the motivation for putting out a new single, “LLC” is a reminder that Lupe is one of the best.
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