Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor - 9.0

I don't normally review music because really I hardly ever listen to complete albums, especially newer stuff - mostly I've been downloading good songs to listen to while running lately (Maroon 5 and Michael Jackson baby). But since I've listened to this entire album a good 5 times in the last week and 5 or 6 songs considerably more times than that, I felt compelled to write something about it. I think the reason I like Lupe so much is because he combines good lyricism with some really thoughtful and intelligent rap. Really the only thing that separates this album from Illmatic (my all-time favorite rap album) is that with Illmatic there really are no weak tracks (only having 9 songs might have something to do with that) whereas there are a few on Food & Liquor I'm starting to regularly skip over. Even so, this album is awesome and Lupe is now on the short list of rappers I really like.