Lasers (album)
| Lasers | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Lupe Fiasco | ||||
| Released | March 7, 2011 | |||
| Recorded | 2008–2010 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 57:03 | |||
| Label | 1st & 15th, Atlantic | |||
| Producer | Lupe Fiasco (exec.), Charles "Chilly" Patton (exec.), Darrale Jones (co-exec.), The Audibles, Alex da Kid, iSHi, The Buchanans, Kane Beatz, King David, Needlz, The Neptunes, Soundtrakk, Jerry Duplessis, Syience, Arden Altino, Miykal Snoddy | |||
| Lupe Fiasco chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Lasers | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 57/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Chicago Tribune |  |
| Entertainment Weekly | A− |
| The Guardian | |
| Los Angeles Times | |
| The New York Times | mixed |
| Pitchfork Media | 3.0/10 |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Slant Magazine | |
| Spin | 6/10 |
Lasers is the third studio album by American rapper Lupe Fiasco, released on March 7, 2011 by Atlantic Records. Production for the album took place between 2008 and 2010. Lasers features production by The Audibles, The Neptunes, Needlz, Alex da Kid, Syience, and long-time collaborator Soundtrakk, among others. Trey Songz, John Legend, Skylar Grey, Sway, Matt Mahaffey, MDMA, Eric Turner and Sarah Green contribute vocals to the album.
Lasers was preceded by the lead single "The Show Goes On" and its follow-up "Words I Never Said" featuring Skylar Grey. The former became Fiasco's highest charting song on the Billboard Hot 100 and has been certified double Platinum in the US. The latter, however, only achieved moderate success on the Hot 100.
The album has received "mixed or average reviews" from most major music critics, having a score of 57 out of 100 at the review aggregator Metacritic. It fared better commercially however, debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200 with first-week sales of over 200,000 copies sold, making the album Fiasco's second top ten album as well as his highest entry on the chart.
Lupe Fiasco was supposedly going to released a triple album, titled LupE.N.D. as his third and final record, but his contract with Atlantic Records prevented him from doing so. From then he postponed LupE.N.D. indefinitely and intended on releasing an album tentatively titled The Great American Rap Album in June 2009. Instead, the album was also postponed and he announced that a new album was in the works, originally titled We Are Lasers and then changed to Lasers. "Lasers" is a backronym for "Love Always Shines Everytime, Remember 2 Smile". Referring to the title of the album, Fiasco has stated: "I've always had that word in my head, I'm a word guy. And I thought 'lasers' would be a dope name for an album, so when I came up with it I just put it in my 'think-tank' and let it evolve and came up with different meanings for it. That’s why I made it an acronym [sic] to give it a new mould, a new understanding, but still playing off the idea that it's bringing light to different circumstances which is what I try and do - bringing understanding and light and awareness to different projects that are going on in the world, and 'L.A.S.E.R.S' is no different. In 2010, to promote the message of the album, Fiasco released a viral video onto the internet titled "The L.A.S.E.R.S. Manifesto", which can be found on both YouTube and the official website. The manifesto reads:
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