''Drogas Wave'' (stylized as ''DROGAS Wave'')
is the seventh
studio album by American
hip hop recording artist
Lupe Fiasco
Wasalu Muhammad Jaco (born February 16, 1982), better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco ( ), is an American rapper, singer, record producer, and entrepreneur. He rose to fame in 2006 following the success of his debut album, '' Lupe Fiasco's ...
, released by 1st and 15th Productions and
Thirty Tigers on September 21, 2018. This album is a follow-up to his 2017 album, ''
Drogas Light''.
Background
Lupe Fiasco announced the album on September 13, 2018, revealing its release date, cover art and track listing via Twitter.
[
The album is the second part of a planned trilogy of albums, with '' Drogas Light'' as its predecessor followed by ''Skulls'', and was slated for a 2016 release with the two albums.
In a 2018 ]Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...
interview, Fiasco revealed the main idea of the project:
It’s about a group of slaves on a slave ship on their way to Africa to the West Indies and they are thrown off the boat. But they didn’t die. They stayed alive and they lived under the sea. And they dedicated their lives to sinking slave ships -- so they became this super, underwater force against slavery. It’s like a super-deep story that I am building on different fronts. But that’s the main idea and the source material for the album.
In a 2018 Complex
Complex commonly refers to:
* Complexity, the behaviour of a system whose components interact in multiple ways so possible interactions are difficult to describe
** Complex system, a system composed of many components which may interact with each ...
interview, Fiasco said:
Drogas Wave is based on a story about a group of slaves that jumped off a
slave ship
Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast i ...
transporting them from Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
. The slaves did not drown, and instead somehow managed to live under the sea. They spent the rest of their underwater existence sinking slave ships. ‘''Drogas''’ is the Spanish word for drugs. I made it an acronym which stands for ‘''Don’t Ruin Us God Said''’.
Because of reported leaks, the album release date was released a week early on September 21, 2018, instead of the initial release date, September 28, 2018.
Songs
On March 15, 2013, Fiasco released a song called "Jonylah Forever" on his SoundCloud
SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform and music sharing website that enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming s ...
page in honor of the 6-month-old infant Jonylah Watkins, who was shot five times while her father was changing her diaper in a minivan and imagines what the infant's life could have been had she survived the March 11 shooting.
On October 24, 2014, Fiasco released a song called "Haile Selassie" featuring longtime contributor Nikki Jean
Nicholle "Nikki" Jean Leary is an American singer.
After studying theatre, Jean began her career as the lead singer of the Philadelphia-based band Nouveau Riche. She began posting acoustic music online. Jean gained major recognition after bei ...
in which he stands up for equality and justice. The title track is inspired by the late Ethiopian emperor of the same name
''Same Name'' is an American reality television series in which an average person swaps lives with a celebrity of the same first name and surname. It premiered on July 24, 2011 on CBS. The series received low ratings, and CBS pulled it after fou ...
.
On December 20, 2015, Fiasco teased a song called "Mural Jr." as a sequel to his song "Mural" from Tetsuo and Youth. The song was originally intended to be included on the previous album, Drogas Light.
"Alan Forever" centers around the death of Alan Kurdi in September 2015 during the European migrant crisis
The 2015 European migrant crisis, also known internationally as the Syrian refugee crisis, was a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe in 2015, when 1.3 million people came to the continent to request ...
. The song tells of an alternate reality where Alan Kurdi does not drown, but instead becomes an Olympic swimmer and later saves a similar boy from drowning. The song is thematically linked to "Jonylah Forever", which also explored an alternative reality of a young child who was killed.
"WAV Files" details the core concept of the album - the Myth of the Long Chains.
Critical reception
''Drogas Wave'' received generally favorable reviews from critics. At Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average
In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...
score of 73, based on 5 reviews.
Commercial performance
''Drogas Wave'' debuted at number 60 on the US ''Billboard'' 200, with first-week sales of 11,099 copies in the United States.
Track listing
Tracklist adapted from iTunes, Qobuz and the album digital booklet.[https://www.facebook.com/rosytimms/posts/1928337850804499 ]
* "Haile Selassie" features additional vocals by Kwayland Smith.
* "Alan Forever" features additional vocals by Dylan James.
* "Stronger" features additional vocals by Dylan Jones.
Charts
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Drogas Wave
2018 albums
Lupe Fiasco albums
Sequel albums
Albums produced by Lupe Fiasco
Albums produced by DJ Dahi
Albums produced by Symbolyc One