Lupe's Beginnings. Aftermath Records and Writing Songs. From Mixtapes to Albums. Living a 'double life'. Building a Label. Lupe's Influences on the Next Generation of Rappers. Lupe and Kanye. Lupe, Jay-Z and Monopoly. Bookmark this story to your personal list and dive deeper after watching the film. Balancing Act. Andrew Barber. Stories like this straight to your inbox.
Exclusive video and the best music writing in the world, in your inbox every week. He's not a flashy speed rapper, but he's got a long stride. He doesn't slow down for his listener. As a lover of poetry and dense verse, Fiasco's style is one of my favorite kinds. It can take 10 listens to catch the Morrissey reference in "Mural," but when I do, in the cold waiting for the bus, it's like a high-five.
Was that for me? I've never been sure who listens to Fiasco. Who wants all these Japanese comic book references? What about these odd beats and multilayered raps about gender norms? Fiasco is famously outspoken—for some, uncomfortably so—about his philosophy, spirituality, and politics. But that's hardly surprising since rolling in with fellow Chicago rapper Kanye West on "Touch the Sky" earned him breakout notoriety. We're coming up now on a hard decade of Fiasco in the spotlight.
And—I won't lie—there were some middling tracks in there. He claims he'll release three full albums this year Drogas , Skulls , and Roy , respectively and then quit rap entirely—but we HAVE heard that one from him before.
World without LUPend. That's what he keeps calling it, "LUPend. I'm that person too, apparently. I'm giving you another album. I'm already past it. I'm not sitting around, "Oh man, I want Lasers. Why don't they put out my songs? You go in and put out another record. And that's what I did. I'm never going to stop. I love music. I'm never going to stop making music. I just did a whole punk rock album. So when the business overshadows the music, then I'm done.
And I'ma step away from that, which is what happened to Lasers. All people see is music. It's a music business. The music is beautiful and great. I love to perform it, and I love to go around the world, and I love to sing it and say it. But I hate to pick up my phone when I get off stage to talk about the music business!
I hate to be looked at as the villain. I can't control my perception to the public but I try not to be a villain. My greatest fault is that I refuse to backbite others and put others on front street to the public. Because if I did that, I would be justified and vindicated with everything that I'm saying. But I'll be doing myself a personal injustice in something I don't believe in. If somebody wants to come to the plate and talk about the stuff that they're doing behind the scenes as to why XYZ isn't happening, then so be it.
But I'm not going to put people on front street. That's why I don't do dis records or any stupidness like that. I'd rather to talk to somebody personally, and if they still motivated enough to tell the public what's going, then so be it.
If not, then I'll take the L, publicly. And I don't mind taking the L. Lupe Fiasco: No, how do you define success?
Am I arguably one of the best rappers in the world? Do I am have a massive, rabid fanbase? Do I have a Grammy? Do I have multiple Grammy nominations? Am I constantly on tour? What else can I say that could be a measure of success?
How many Ferraris do I have? Do I have my own clothing line? Am I respected by every single noteworthy artist, rapper, producer in the game? Lupe Fiasco: Whoa, whoa, whoa. See, that's even greater. Even with me without having an album out, am I still in the public consciousness? Lupe Fiasco: Whoa, hold on. Wait, wait, wait. Are you doing an interview with Lupe Fiasco right now? What does that say? I'll [give] you a definition of what people say success is. People say Jay-Z is successful.
Why is Jay-Z successful? Because he has his own clothing line, he has a collection of Ferraris, because he's worth millions of dollars.
Because he has connections to everybody around the world, he goes on fantastic vacations, and he sits front row at the Louis Vuitton fashion shows.
I do that too. Now let's talk about rapping. Is Lupe Fiasco not revered? So he stopped his show to point out that I was standing at the booth and said, "That's one of the greatest writers of our time. You could do that with Kanye, Pharrell, and Drake, who called me a legend in my own city. And that's Drake, he's way bigger than I am. So let's look at that. Then let's go to our garages because we want to go out to the club. What are you driving? You're driving a Benz or something.
Let me take this Ferrari I'm gonna drive today. And that's not to boast. That's to show people, what is success? And I don't even care about the cars.
I drive them to the grocery store. I drive them to the masjid to make salah. I don't care about none of that. All of that material success and what people quantify as being successful means nothing to me. I'm satisfied, I'm happy.
My family, my friends, and everybody is happy. I'm at the best time of my life. It's Ramadan. But people always want to bog it down with "success. Success is a very dangerous thing and I think we have to be very careful about when we dictate what success is for somebody else. Because you don't know what it's like. I'm happy with two albums. You may not be good with two albums, but who are you to tell me to put out three albums? I can tell you, "Man, you need to quit Complex and go work for Rolling Stone.
But who am I to tell you that? If you feel comfortable, and you feel happy, and successful at your job, then that's success. You define that as success, then that's success. Success is not a general thing. It's a personal thing. It's a personal attribute. So let's look at success is for me.
That was success for me. I didn't want much. Little kid from the hood who wanted to be a rapper, my idol at the time told me I was nice. I was done. I'm good. I don't care about Pitchfork 's 8. Jay-Z said I was nice, so as a rapper I'm good. And I'm better than you. And I can really rap. And you'll even say that I'm better than you.
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