Lupe Fiasco

Lupe Fiasco knows how quickly the Internet can turn on a brother. In 2005, the 25-year-old MC outshone Kanye West on Touch the Sky. A year later, the lead single from Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor, Kick Push, became a sleeper hit. A laid back, jazzy track about love and skateboarding prompted some to announce the Chicago native as hip hop's Next Big Thing.

A devout Muslim whose birth name is Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, Fiasco raps about geek-chic, social issues and streetwear over silky tracks reminiscent of early 90's legends A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. Propelled by Internet love, Food & Liquor debuted at number eight on the Billboard 200 chart but sales soon stalled, perhaps because the record had been leaked months earlier on the web. Rave reviews, three Grammy nominations and appearances by The Neptunes, Kanye West and Jay-Z failed to move units.

Fiasco may have worsened his commercial appeal after posting a message on Okayplayer.com admitting he "wasn't familiar" with the work of A Tribe Called Quest, the very group to which he is so often compared, favorably. "Fiascogate," as it was dubbed by bloggers, escalated after the rapper flubbed a line from a song by A Tribe Called Quest during a live performance on VH1's "Hip Hop Honors." Vibe magazine added fuel to the fire by publishing an interview conducted weeks before the performance in which a defiant Fiasco stated: "MC Hammer was way more popular to me than Tribe Called Quest." In a matter of weeks, the online hip hop community was asking WTF?

On Superstar, the lead single from his new record, The Cool, Fiasco may be answering that very question.

I'm too uncouth
Unschooled to the rules
And too gum shoe
Too much of a newcomer
And too uncool

By which Fiasco might mean: so uncool as to be cool, again. In its first week out, The Cool sold nearly 160,000 copies, twice as many as Food & Liquor during the same time period. The Internet, it appears, has forgiven Fiasco. In little over two years, he has amassed 548,335 friends on MySpace – 30,000 more than Jay-Z. One commenter on the prominent hip hop site Okayplayer.com responded to news of the album's strong sales by concluding: "It's a great album, it deserves the hype." Believe it.