I was going to review Lupe Fiasco’s new album. I honestly was.

DROGAS Light was his first release since 2015’s underrated Tetsuo and Youth — and his first album since retiring, unretiring, announcing three new albums and never releasing those three new albums. It should have been an interesting album to write about ­— the soulful musings of Chicago’s thinker over trap instrumentals? Sounds, at the very least, like a terrible experiment.

But, sadly, someone beat me to it. And that someone? World-famous music critic Lupe Fiasco.

On the same day DROGAS Light came out, the rapper posted a lengthy review of the album on Twitter.

“The only review of #DROGASLight that matters … Lupe’s,” he wrote.

So I gave up — but that doesn’t mean you should take Lupe’s review at face value.

So here’s the only review of Lupe’s review of #DROGASLight that matters … Patrick’s.

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“Why are we even here?” This is the question that takes center stage in the mind of controversially brilliant critic Patrick Basler as he reads Lupe Fiasco’s review of his own new album, in which the rapper refers to himself as “controversially brilliant” and calls his last album a “masterpiece.”

Throughout Lupe’s review, it’s clear, despite lackluster sales and a number of uninspired, less-than-stellar projects; the rapper still thinks quite highly of himself. In fact, here’s a list of terms used by Lupe to describe Lupe:

Fastidious

Lyrically dense

Super lit

Imaginative

A “rapper’s rapper”

A loquacious Luddite

A master “taking it easy”

But despite Lupe’s perhaps inflated idea of his own artistry, how accurately does he rate his own music? His review actually isn’t as far off as you might think.

“His latest effort DROGAS Light is somewhat of a mixed bag,” he wrote, and that’s the damn truth.

From festival trap bangers like “Jump (feat. Gizzle)” to the lean slice of Drake-worship “Promise,” DROGAS is a product of the genre-hopping rap pioneered by his one-time collaborator Kanye West. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly the strength Lupe thinks it is.

While Lupe might call it a “refinement of LASERS,” DROGAS Light suffers many of the same issues that plagued the sloppy 2011 pop-rap record. The best songs here play directly Lupe’s strengths as an artist — seven-minute Chicago soul epic “Kill” wouldn’t sound out of place on Food & Liquor. And the Rick Ross and Big K.R.I.T-featuring trap anthem “Tranquillo” hurts itself with a painfully obvious hook, but is a largely enjoyable stab at trap rap.The album takes too many awkward leaps in suspect directions to work as a cohesive project. Which is fine — even Lupe admits the album was cobbled together from demos and unreleased tracks.

“I just kinda let the pieces fall where they may. […] The majority of this album is from the vaults and only a few pieces were actually put down to fill out the vision,” Lupe wrote in his review.

If only he stayed that honest to himself in his music.

Review score:

Album score:

3-Shells