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Conscious Hip Hop Vol. 1 feat. Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Lupe Fiasco & Common

Thirty-six tracks from a Chicago rapper who is as gifted as anyone of his generation and has spent his career at war with the industry that signed him.

Lupe Fiasco

Wasalu Muhammad Jaco arrived in 2006 as one of the most technically accomplished writers in hip-hop, with a debut album about skateboarding, comic books, Islam and the West Side of Chicago that sounded like nothing else on the radio.

What followed is one of the more instructive label-relations stories in modern music. His third album was delayed for years by Atlantic; fans organised public protests demanding its release; when it appeared, he publicly disowned parts of it. He has been an unusually outspoken critic of the industry, of American foreign policy and of hip-hop itself ever since.

The work survives the noise. He writes in extended metaphors sustained across entire songs, uses multiple narrators, and builds verses whose meaning only resolves at the end — techniques closer to poetry than to most rap.

What to listen for

"Hurt Me Soul" is the best introduction: an autobiographical account of his relationship with hip-hop's misogyny and his own faith, which manages to be an argument rather than a sermon.

"Dumb It Down" is the thesis statement — a song where increasingly complex verses are interrupted by voices telling him to simplify, and it is very funny.

"Superstar" with Matthew Santos is the biggest hit here, and "Paris, Tokyo" is the warmest thing he has recorded.

"Words I Never Said" with Skylar Grey is the most politically confrontational record he released on a major label, and it is astonishing that it came out.

"All Black Everything" is the most ambitious piece of writing in the catalogue — an alternate history in which slavery never happened, sustained for a full song without ever becoming glib.

"Around My Way", "Streets on Fire" and "Strange Fruition" are the other political records, and "Battle Scars" with Guy Sebastian was an enormous hit in Australia and almost unknown in America.

"Madonna (And Other Mothers in the Hood)" is the deep cut to hear next.

Go deeper

Food & Liquor (2006) and The Cool (2007) are the two essential albums, and the second is a concept record whose narrative genuinely rewards the effort. Tetsuo & Youth (2015) is the most musically adventurous.

For Chicago's wider tradition of ambitious rap writing: Common, Kanye West, Chance the Rapper, Noname and Mick Jenkins.

How to approach it: ninety-eight tracks is a biography rather than a playlist, and it rewards being heard in order. The catalogue is an argument he has been having with himself for thirty years — positions taken, later recanted in song — and the recantations only make sense if you have heard what came before them.

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