But less polarizing.

The one thing everyone agrees on, with 'Jest' and with
'Tetsuo' is that the author is so painfully gifted at
their craft that the joy of seeing it in actions is in
itself a joy. There are sets of 5 pages in 'Jest' where
DFW simply zones out and snaps, even though it takes you
12 pages to figure out what's going on. And they are worth
reading.

Lupe legitimately makes some quantum leaps forward lyrically
on this album.

I don't know the last time I heard a hip-hop record and thought:

"Gee, this is a huge step forward."

The key Lupe trait is that he (contrary to what
people tend to think) really understands the street aesthetic
(he actually grew up in a worse hood than 99.9999% of cocaine
and gun rappers), understands pop culture, understands
the aesthetic of talk shit and brag, understands that Nas
"street poet" shit....but has a literary, and irony, and
tragedy tone to his spit that no other rapper has.

Its way, way, way ahead of its time.

He doesn't try to merge these understandings, but somehow his
*grasp* of them really emerges.

And its only "snobby" if you dislike smart black people, which
a lot of you guys do, unfortunately.

Hip-Hop needs to move into the future. The artform hasn't
actually grown in a long time lyrically...probably not since
the multi-syllable takeover, which wasn't really a content
innovation (but a delivery innovation, and a good one).

Its a masterpeice.