Chicago is musical ground zero for how it has innovated sound through time, with key figures giving new meanings to music that matches the city’s eclectic nature. Muddy Waters created “Chicago blues” giving the southern-based music a more industrial sound, DJ Frankie Knuckles started house at Chi-town establishment The Warehouse, and drill could stand as its own personality for how it popularized a whole city’s rap scene in the early 2010s.

Drill gave birth to some of modern rap’s most generational talents like Lil Durk, Fredo Santana, and perhaps the genre’s most prolific figure in Chief Keef. Popular rappers up to that point promoted dangerous behavior with a sort of contemplation that demonstrated the duality of these actions, while Sosa and his peers in drill enthusiastically gloated about their indulgence in illicit behavior over high-flying drill beats.

Wasalu Muhammed Jaco, known worldwide as Lupe Fiasco, comes from Chicago’s Westside, and rose to prominence in the late-20002/early 2010s for a very different sounding version of rap than what Chief Keef helped cultivate. Around the time of Sosa’s first hit, Fiasco had just ascended to a No. 1 Billboard 200 album spot with Lasers, an album that pandered to radio plays for its oversaturated electronic sound with up-tempo pop bars thrown on top.

Instead of remaining in this unimaginative state which afforded him the limelight, the Chicago native innovated his sound greatly starting with 2015’s Tetsuo & Youth. From the systemic effects of slavery on Black people to the peculiarities of religion, Fiasco became unafraid to take on complex issues that he felt a deep connection with.

And on Fiasco’s latest project, Drill Music in Zion, the hip-hop veteran brings his most sonically and thematically centered piece of art yet, with poignant messages coming hand in hand with serene beats and rhythms. As the title alludes to, the album is a philosophical analysis of the dual effects that drill, and the dangerous lifestyle of the modern-day trapper have had on Chicago’s youth.

In Drill Music in Zion, Fiasco’s voice is meant to be mentoring and critical toward up-and-coming rappers. The seasoned veteran’s sagacity and intellect widely allows him to do this as his bars often ring true and well thought out, and he only comes off as excessively didactic a handful of times on the album.

Fiasco sets his narrative to the backdrop of benevolent synth jazz rhythms, creating a juxtaposition between his sound and the very genre of music he’s addressing.

Wasting no time, the album begins with “The Lion’s Deen”, a two and half minute spoken word piece delivered by Fiasco’s sister, Ayesha Jaco. The opening stanza from Ayesha echoes, “Drill music, pop that pill music, kill music, desecrating the temples and the ghettos, funeral processionals increase their frequency because we can’t break the spell of Geppetto.”

The poetic verse decries the glamorization of the dangerous lives that drill artists and their associates lead, stating that its popularity has only fed into a false narrative about this livelihood’s perceived grandiose. It clearly paints contemporary rap as an issue that has kept up a cycle of instability in some communities as younger musicians became infatuated with becoming a rapper who poses as a trapper, instead of a true artist.

This twisted cycle is something Fiasco takes aim at on back-to-back tracks “Precious Things” and “Kiosk” — two tracks that address how material obsession has changed rap for the worse. Led by an angelic chorus from Nayirah, “Precious Things” candidly describes how the pursuit of a faux nefarious lifestyle can create more problems than opportunities for rappers. “Kiosk” meanwhile is a metaphorical story set in a mall, where the jewelry bought by rappers and trappers are fraught with perils that outweigh the image of affluence that the customers are trying to chase.

Quickly, Fiasco is keen to back up his philosophy on those two songs with his philosophy behind the message on “Ms. Mural”. This five-and-a-half-minute diatribe addresses a myriad of closely related topics that revolve around what Fiasco clearly sees as the degeneration of rap.

The song is adept in its ability to fluidly transition from one topic to another, tying them together to paint a complete picture of why Fiasco is so morose about the state of rap. He expresses that nobody in today’s game dares to be too different, where instead of trying to be more creative than one another, the competition is driven by who has more clout, stating that “the velocity of trends is what referees the pace.”

With a track that contains so much verbiage over an extended period, Fiasco does throw out some head-scratching misses in his bars such as “it’s not really a beat but conceptually at stake, like genitals and gender roles, they successfully conflate.” The song also leaves very little breathing room which would allow listeners to chew on the material for long enough to get a full picture, which ultimately makes some of the lines that stick out more seem perplexing.

“Naomi” by contrast is a smooth jazz riff that Fiasco is a much lighter presence on. While the bars aren’t as hard hitting as before, Fiasco is still able to get his religious perspective off his chest here as he finds modern culture in general, not just the rap world, to be trending toward more devilish habits.

The album’s title track keeps up with the jazzy flow where Fiasco’s bars pop with vibrant rhythm behind it. Even in his rhythmic tuning, Fiasco delivers arguably his most deep concept of the entire project, delivering the idea that rap used to be a celebration of the Black conscience, but has now been weaponized for the sake of capitalism. He even calls it “copper Ebonics” relating how like the raw material, Black verse has become a tool, co-opted for profit.

Finally, after painting around the direness of a clout-chasing rap lifestyle, Fiasco opens the closer on Drill Music in Zion with the deadpan, but hard-hitting verse, “rappers die too much, that’s the verse.” As euphoric synths hum in the background of “On Faux Nem”, Fiasco proceeds to go all in on the egregiously monetized structure of drill, rap, hip-hop and everything in between.

He calls out the greediness of the streaming area while denouncing the overuse of posthumous music for the sake of squeezing every last drop of money out of artists. His analysis is all laid out in verse that is elaborate, sensible and digestible for listeners.

The angelic and infectious sounds of Drill Music in Zion are overall an asset that will allow listeners to return to the album with ease for multiple listens. Even with the subject matter, which while prophetic and wise, can be so philosophical at times that it’s hard to chew, the harmonies of jazz wrapped around Fiasco’s rhymes create a project well worth a listen and a larger discussion about where rap stands in the modern zeitgeist.

Asher Ali is a staff writer.

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