I once had a teacher who told me that one of the best ways to interpret art was to compare it to other art. Now, at that time we were talking about books, but it really applies to all forms of expression. And so with that in mind I'm going to frame this review as a comparison with Kanye West's Ye.

Like Ye, Samurai is woefully short. Also like Ye, it's a deeply introspective piece that sees a beloved Chicago artist step back and take a look at his life. Although the album was originally meant to just be one song (the title track, "Samurai"), Lupe Fiasco quickly realized that he had much more to talk about. In fact, most of what he seemed to have to discuss wasn't even about the original concept, which was Amy Winehouse as a battle rapper. It seems that Lupe Fiasco seized the moment to take some self-reflection time and write about his own life and career.

The EP kicks off with "Samurai", which is easily the best and most exciting song on the album. When you listen to it, you can really see that Lupe Fiasco felt the idea and wanted to run with it. The instrumentation is great, the drums carry just enough energy to keep his flows going, and his singing is also quite good. Next up we have "Mumble Rap", which is just so well written and has some amazing storytelling, very characteristic of Lupe. This is followed by "Cake", and it's around this point in the EP that I really got the feeling that it started turning more inwards instead of being about Amy Winehouse. Although the lyrics could be interpreted ambiguously, I really felt like he was talking about himself and his career.

After this we have "Palaces", where the stop-and-start verses can be iffy at times but the beat is more than enough to make up for it. Then you've got "No. 1 Headband", "Bigfoot", "Outside", and "Till Eternity", all of which I felt were good in their own respects. The only one of these that really stood out was "Outside", though.

Overall, this EP was very strong and had a really interesting concept that sort of branched out into more reflective and contemplative themes. I really liked the production, the writing was obviously great, although I feel like some of the songs just didn't match the quality and execution of the first three. And so for those reasons I'm gonna go with a light to moderate 7 for this one.