Budo Brothers Podcast

The Budo Brothers Podcast is a martial arts podcast launched in March 2020 by Kyle Mahadeo and Erik Allan. On December 9, 2021, they published their interview with American rapper Lupe Fiasco. They talked about his upbringing in the martial arts, venture into hip hop, and dealing with adversity."Lupe Fiasco on the Budo Brother Podcast". YouTube. December 9, 2021.
== Description ==
When we say martial arts is a lifestyle no one better represents that than Grammy award-winning rapper Lupe Fiasco. A martial arts lifestyle was not a choice. He was born into it. Now music is his expression and his craft that he shares with the world... But martial arts is in his blood.
In this podcast, we talk to Lupe about how he grew up only knowing martial arts. He discusses how his dad was such a huge role model to his success, how he would train jumping out of windows doing dive rolls and wearing his Gi in the hood of southside Chicago.
Lupe is a true artist and inspiration and we are so glad to share this podcast with you.
== Transcript ==
Kyle Mahadeo	Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Budo Brothers Podcast. We have a special guest today: Grammy award-winning, dropping dope music like Food & Liquor and some of my favorites like "Superstar," "The Show Goes On." I know Erik's favorite, "Kick, Push." GQ Man of the Year, also community activist with things like M.U.R.A.L., Society of Spoken Art, lifelong martial artist, rapper, producer, entrepreneur, and community advocate, Lupe Fiasco.
Erik Allan 	Welcome to the show!
Lupe Fiasco 	Thank you all for having me, man, I really appreciate it. First and foremost, I wanna say that my bio is way too long.
Kyle Mahadeo	[Laughs.] We should have just went 'dope dude.'
Lupe Fiasco 	Just like, it feels like "oh man, that's a lot."
Erik Allan 	You do a lot.
Lupe Fiasco 	Yeah, I do, that's not a good thing, man, I need to downsize.
Kyle Mahadeo	No way, no way, you have such a body of work that it's amazing. Like you've been doing it for a long time and for people who maybe don't follow hip hop, we're talking to an icon in the hip hop industry. It's such a pleasure to sit here and chat with you. But we love reaching out to you because we see you in your feed all the time training martial arts, so we'd love to get a little bit of a background about your martial arts. I know it's deeply rooted in your family, and if we could just give us a little bit of insight of your training.
Lupe Fiasco 	Well, I want to reciprocate the voyeurism. I stay in tune with you all, too, and the Budo Brothers channel and some of the training kind of montages and stuff that you have to get even more dangerous. So I really appreciate what you all are doing in the martial arts space and I actually learned—I don't want to say a lot, 'cause when we get into the story you'll see actually my martial arts is ridiculous. The experience, not my skills, but my experience in martial arts. But I did learn and actually reinforced some things that we were taught kind of younger or were interfaced with younger that I've seen kind of being reciprocated in you all's channel. So I was like, oh yeah, they're legit, they're legit. But then also for the fashion. For y'all that don't know about fashion, I am currently decked out from waist to head. Thank you guys for blessing me with the material over the past like few months, I really appreciate.
Kyle Mahadeo	It's an honor that it suits your style.
Lupe Fiasco 	I can't wait to beat up somebody in my Budo clothes.
Kyle Mahadeo	Front kick down the stairs, pow.
Erik Allan 	So what got you started, how did your journey start in martial arts?
Lupe Fiasco 	So the story goes my dad, it all stems from my father. I'm second generation martial artist, you could consider my dad the headmaster, originator, of the particular martial arts experience. I hesitate to call it like a roux or like a style, because it encompassed so many different things and I'll kind of add into that. But it started with my dad, I think he said he was 14 or something like that and was going around the projects in Chicago. So he was born in Chicago, grew up in the projects, the Robert Taylor Homes, and it was kind of at a time where he was like one of the first people in the projects, when it was nice. And then I guess over time, the projects became the projects, you had to influx of all these kind of different gang things and stuff like that so my dad was kind of like almost a vigilante where he would be one of the guys fighting back against the gangs, protecting the neighborhood and stuff like that.
And at the time, there was a theater in Chicago called McVicker's and they used to show kung-fu films, so they would import the kung-fu films. So my dad would always say his, I would say his starting point was Five Fingers to Death, the movie. And he said they would just go see it at McVicker's all the time. Five Fingers of Death is one of the classic things, and I remember he was saying they would be in the projects because everybody will go see it, they'll be in the projects and there's a scene in Five Fingers of Death where they'll be like "Yin-Yin!" and it's like "Chih-Hao!" "Yin-Yin!" You'll hear one person on this side of the project say "Yin-Yin," and then another person of this project responds.
But anyway, that was kind of his interface with the martial arts, and from that point on he started to train. He sought out instructors from all these different styles, and I'm compressing. So his judo instructor, who's still alive today named Master Shin, who's based in Chicago, who's actually one of the early folks in kyokushin kai and a judo expert and taught all these different things. I have a school now called Military Arts Institute. So my dad trained judo with him, went to the Japanese cultural center in Chicago and trained aikido with Master Toyota and then just started to pick up all these different things. So I have his original copy of this is karate from Mas Oyama, right, and when I didn't recognize it at the time when we were kids, but our karate program was basically this is karate. It was basically kyokushin kai's Mas Oyama's. This karate book from the stances, from the techniques, to the training, to the exercise, the whole thing. So my dad basically just took this book and turned it into our karate school, so to speak. But in that, you have aikido, you have judo, you have iaido, we had wushu, we have various styles of kung-fu, we had gōjū-ryū, we had shotokan, so we have all these different pieces and parts from the martial arts world in addition to a lot of the cultural stuff that was in there as well. We had dojos that were like, this looks like a dojo fresh out of Japan and then another dojo which looks like an obstacle course from American gladiators that would try and kill you. I learned how to count in Japanese before I could count in English because we were doing karate that young and everything was in Japanese, you know. So I was born into it. So my dad had his first school actually a few blocks away from the projects. It was called the Black Dragon Slayers, and the story goes that he had to school with a few other instructors and then they all went to the dark side. So he had to start a new school called Tornado, and that's what we come into the picture, that's when we were born in the 80's.
Kyle Mahadeo	That sounds like a kung-fu movie itself, right there.
Lupe Fiasco 	Yeah, the original school turns bad and then he has to start like this new school, so he started Tornado. And Tornado School is where I started, so I was born in '82 and I've been doing martial arts since 1982. Since I was a baby, so there's photos of me when I'm like, I don't even know how how old I am in the photos just sitting there in the gi, just rocking out, doing whatever. Competing since very young, winning tournaments from kata to to kumite to whatever and because it was the family business, so we had schools. We have one school on South Side of Chicago, one school in West Side Chicago and you know Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, we're at the school, training working out. And then when we come home because my dad was very much a real martial arts guy, our the dojo was at home. So you go home and there's a wall of weapons. There's training dummies and stuff, I won't say training dummies but there's training apparatuses outside. He's doing weekend retreats with. His top students would come to the house and train, and he would show them like okuden and secret technique and stuff like that. So yeah, man, my life was it was completely immersed in the martial arts since I was born and I actually trained and instructed and taught all the way up until I was about like maybe 16, I think I got my black belt when I was like 10. I would junior instruct up until I was about like maybe maybe 15, 16, and then I stopped to start rapping.
Kyle Mahadeo	Nice, so you took a little hiatus from it. Like how long, because you came back, obviously.
Lupe Fiasco 	Oh, a very long hiatus. I didn't get back into consistently training until like maybe a few years ago and it was crazy because I would go to. When I had the opportunity, I wanted to go to Japan since I was a kid I was like I want to live in Japan because they walk around in hakuman and they [?] all day. Knowing that they had like video games, and cars, and I thought it was like samurai times. So when I was going to Japan, when I first started to go to Japan, I was going for music. I wasn't even thinking about martial arts. I wasn't even thinking like oh, let me go get a gi. Oh, yo, let me go to this martial arts store and get a sword. Or let me go here and get some sars or let me go to okinawa. I was like, where the Nikes at? It was strange in that you know I had that pivot kind of in my midlife now when I was in my late teens where I just wanted to do rap, I just wanted to do music. I still kept up with the martial arts, but at that point I've been doing it... let's call it since three years old, like legit. I've been doing it for you know 10, 12 years. So it was already in me and like teaching teaching tai chi classes. As much as tai chi as I knew, right, and teaching full-on karate classes and doing examinations for my iaido and doing all that stuff. I got to that point where I was like I already know how to do all that. I want to do something else, and then a few years ago I was like, you know what, I want go back to my martial arts. So for the past few years I've been back training heavy.
Erik Allan 	Nice, nice, what does your current training look like? Are you training privately, solo, group classes? I'm sure if there was group classes, there'd be "yo, can I get a signature?"
Lupe Fiasco 	It's the same mix that my dad—I'm just a replication of my dad, so every facet that he trained in and introduced us to the martial arts through, I still do that today. I train privately because I know a lot of the stuff, so I don't really need like a class. And I probably wouldn't fit in a class. That's kind of one of, let's call it a downside of being in a school like that, a program like that, is that you learn so much stuff. It's not like you're paying tuition to go and there's pressure on the sensei to teach you from a certain set of examinations and stuff like that. It's like you're Karate Kid, your training is constant. If you're not training physically, you're training mentally. If you're not training mentally, you're doing something academic in the martial arts, you're reading books, and stuff like that. So I was reading Buddhist shinzo and all these manuals when I was like nine years old, ten years old, right. All these wushu manuals and it was bananas. But when you're doing that deep, and you go to just like a regular karate school, you don't fit because you're incorporating drunken boxing into this taekwondo skillset and there's a little mix of judo. And then as soon as dude grabs you, you're like poking them in the eyes. You can't do that, you just have to focus on doing this kata and you're like but katas are boring. Like we we did we broke through that kind of barrier of like, let's just do a bunch of codas all this like katas are boring as hell, let's jump off the roof of the house. Why don't we do that?
So I can't really fit in a traditional school program unless I start from scratch. I wanted to do. My friend Bear who's at [?], I was like, you know I want to get into BJJ, right? And I already did some BJJ nogi with an instructor from Brazil which was like a private lesson and this was like some years ago. But then I was like, you know what, let me get into just this BJJ like this, this BJJ that exists modern-wise and started to kind of look for a school. But when you're a rapper it's like yeah, I'll be there, when's the class? Saturday? Okay, I have a concert on Saturday. When's the next one? It's Tuesday, oh I got a concert on Tuesday. Wednesday night? It's Tuesday, I got a concert on Tuesday. When's the next one? Wednesday, I got a concert on Wednesday, so it kind of limits my schedule being a rapper and then also the way we were trained kind of eliminates a traditional school program unless I start from scratch. So right now, to answer the question, I train privately in the techniques and stuff that I already know. If I need reinforcement and a certain thing I'll do what everybody else does and watch YouTube you know on YouTube like what's Ānanda, what's that move for this kata okay, let me see. But I'm also training jōdō from scratch. So shout-out to Sensei Mike Belzer who's an aficionado and Shintō Musō to you jōdō. So I'm doing jōdō from scratch. I've been training that the past like few months from scratch. I try and train every day wushu one day, karate the next day yeah, today's either day so I just just finished training when i got with you guys I'm gonna go back out and do some more. Yeah, that's my mix, man.
Erik Allan 	That's so beautiful.
Kyle Mahadeo	I wanted to talk to you a little bit about passion and purpose. We believe that when passion and purpose collide, you get service and we see that you are ultra passionate about the rap game and hip hop and you constantly are in this creative cycle. In fact, it's just amazing the amount of volume you've outputted and also not losing your essence of who you truly are, especially in a commercialized industry like hip hop. Could you talk to us a little bit about the journey of hip hop, what what what drew you to it and like how you serve people through it?
Lupe Fiasco 	Again, going back to my dad. My dad did all this martial arts stuff but he was also a musician, he was also an engineer, and he was also collected Star Wars figurines and all this other crazy stuff. So there's pieces of me and everything I do in my dad and my mom. My mom's a seamstress, so I'm around here like sewing patches on uniforms and stuff like that, but anyway. My dad, he was a musician, and so the house was not only filled with all these dangerous weapons and martial arts memorabilia and library but it was also full of instruments. So there would be Indian tablas and there would be sitars, three sitars just in the living room. Like why are there three sitars, let alone sitar.
Erik Allan 	I don't even know what a sitar is.
Lupe Fiasco 	So like Ravi Shankar kind of like Indian guitar.
Erik Allan 	Okay, okay.
Lupe Fiasco 	There you go, you should train to it sometimes like. My dad actually used. Music was a big part of our martial arts experience. We had a drum core that would do like taiko and kodō and African drums kind of mixed together so whenever we did demonstrations you would hear like this crazy drumming and it would be like our drum orchestra. We had a school drum, a big [?] in school so anyways all these instruments and all that stuff was there my dad used to make these drums like in the in the bathtub to soak the skins and then put them on the drums and take them to the school and the kids would learn how to play drums. My dad was an African drummer and all that, so he was full-on kind of like musician type. Music was always around us and he had a myriad of instruments, so he had like a clarinet just sitting. I wanted to play clarinet, I wanted to be like Benny Goodman. I wanted to play jazz, that was like my thing, I wanna be a jazz musician, I wanna play jazz and I got around like maybe high school so like freshman year and I watched the Benny Goodman story somewhere in there and I was like yes, I'm doing it! And I went to high school and I was like hey, went to the band department "hey, can y'all teach me how to play the clarinet?" And they was like "nope, you were supposed to learn that back in your music program and in junior high or grade school." I was like but nobody told me and then it was like, "oh well, you got to go to music school" and blah, blah, I was like I don't have the patience for that, so I started to rap.
So rap seemed like the next best thing because it was easy, right, and all my homies were doing it so my whole crew in high school were like we all started to rap together and so it became like yeah, I'mma be a rapper and so rap filled the jazz void, the clarinet void, and initially it was just these words. There's something about these words and telling these stories and vibing with my homies and I would come home from school and write a bunch of raps and realized that it was six o'clock and I had to go back to school you know so I would come home from school and write all through the night all through the morning until it was time to go back just to go to write one verse to go back to school to speak to my homies. And so I just fell in love with it it became my cycle, it became my my life, and then I got a record deal when I was still in high school. So it was like when I started start at the beginning of high school, maybe junior high high school, and then by the time I'm leaving high school, I'm looking at record deals and I went straight into the industry. And it was like, that's my journey, basically. But it was like, I don't know if it had a purpose beyond just checking off a music thing. Here's my version of my dad doing music, he did his music, his African music and then his ethnic kind of music and I'm gonna do the music of my times, which is hip hop. And he introduced me to hip hop, so he introduced me to N.W.A., and Public Enemy, and De la Soul. That's what he was playing in addition to all this other stuff so I was like, I'm gonna do that and then it gained a purpose as I started to go through life. You know, because I mentioned I'm still a teenager in the music business so it's like what is purpose, what are you talking about? Let's get this money and bust these raps. It turns into purpose as I go through my career.
Erik Allan 	Do you think being exposed to martial arts at a very young age had an influence on your music, or your journey, at all?
Lupe Fiasco 	I'm not exposed to martial arts, this gonna sound very Steven Seagal-esque people like you know McDojo type shit. But the difference between it may. With me, I wasn't exposed to martial arts. We were martial arts. So it's a different kind of purview and I stand on that because you meet guys and it's like so when'd you start training? and I'll say oh man, I started training when I was 20. Even people that came into our school you know, imagine we had school since the 70's, not since the 90's, not since the 2000's, since the 70's, right. And my dad's been training martial arts since the 60's. And the entire family's black belts. So my sisters are black belts, my brothers are black belts, and they're all in different expertises. My brother does judo and ju-jitsu, and stuff like that. And my dad would have went been world champion in judo, so it wasn't like this was an option, like you were born into a gi, you were born and this is what you know. Like the first person I ever saw in a karate uniform was my dad. The first time I ever saw a katana was in the hands of my dad, the first place I ever received the katana was from my dad. The first place that I ever heard Japanese was from my dad. The first place that I ever got an arrow shot at me at the end of the dojo. The first place we ever walked across hot coals was with my dad, in my yard. The first place that we ever kicked out candles and punched out shit was in my dad. It's like those are my early experiences, it's not like oh you were doing regular stuff and holidays and going to school and then it was like okay then you get here's the martial arts and then it kind of changes you. So I say all that to say, I don't know anything else. There is no influenced this because you got introduced to that and you already had this set of programming and then martial arts came in and then it altered that program and or gave you a different perspective. It's like no, no, no, we've always done the martial arts, I don't know anything else. So the rest of life right just has always been experienced as a martial arts experience. It's never been kind of anything else.
Kyle Mahadeo	Do you see anywhere where that sets you apart from people or ahead of people? Having that experience being different?
Erik Allan 	Yeah, work ethic, perseverance, coming over adversity. Has any of that spilled over?
Lupe Fiasco 	I mean, there's so many different layers and levels to the martial arts so which you all know, there's competitive stuff. So there's a whole set of ideologies and philosophies specifically for competitive martial arts, which is legit and genuine. So sport competition stuff like that. Then there's a whole like esoteric, wellness, health internal thing to the martial arts, which has its own set of philosophies and history historiographies and stuff like that. Then you have just full-on combat which has its own set of philosophies and blah, blah, blahs, right? And then you have spiritual which has its own set of blah, blah, and then you have a play in the martial arts and that has its own set of philosophies in blah, blah, blah. So it's not like one specific one-size-fits-all kind of thing, right? So it's like you could look at your business and you can approach it legitimately from a competitive martial arts philosophy standpoint. Or you can approach it from a more budo or bujutsu way, right, really combat kill something type view. Or you can approach it from a really spiritual kind of aspect. But all of them are legitimate, all of them are legitimate regardless of how you which one you use as I guess it's all just kind of what your intentions are.
So for me, what I've leaned into and kind of set on as what I choose to guide myself through life, from the martial arts experience, is from iaido and the concept of EI right? And the harmony, right. So it's not about being at peace, right, it's not about being at war. It's not about being brave, it's not about being a coward, it's not about being ethical, right? And it's not about being non-ethical. It's about being harmonious to what the situation is. So if I have to kill this guy, I gotta kill this guy. If I have to let this guy beat me up so I don't go to jail, then I gotta let this guy beat me up. At least think that he beat me up. For me, recently it's been that it's been the harmony piece as opposed to trying to extract peace from a situation that isn't constructed to generate peace. Or to insert war into a situation that doesn't require that or sport into a situation that doesn't require that or et. cetera, et. cetera, et. cetera. So I think it's that, the piece about harmony and figuring that out and then movie music kind of prefaces it all but, yeah, the EI piece.
Kyle Mahadeo	I love that. One thing that we really notice about you and even when you're speaking on social media is your authenticity and how that leads your creative process. We try to do the same thing. We want to create amazing products that people enjoy and engage with and get a good vibe from. Could you talk a little bit about your creative process and how you keep putting out innovative things?
Lupe Fiasco 	Yeah, I can. It's very much so 'cause when I was doing music, music is my main product, right. So when I was doing music again, it was like in high school and I was just learning the ropes and I was doing it without any you know expectation of commercial. This it was like here's a cultural thing that I do nine times out of ten. I'm going to the theater, I'm going to the military, I'm going to revert back to my martial arts and then I'll be at an age in my late teens where I'll really be able to start perfecting and doing the training and have a higher level of discipline and I'll probably pick up where my dad left off right. So music, it never had a real intention or a goal and it was literally just like one of my homies saying one day like yo, you know what, you sound like you could be on the radio. You know it was like yo, you sound like you can do this for real. I was like, I guess. Then it all comes to fruition, you get a deal. So you get this record deal and I don't know what to do you know so it's like who do I? Like I'm still learning how to do this like I'm still learning how to be a rapper like I'm still learning the history and I'm still learning techniques and blah, blah, blah, blah, but now you have a record deal. So now you have to produce what commercial product you have to put stuff that's going to sell.
So it's like, okay, let me learn how to do that. So you're spending a bunch of time learning that. But then also it's at a time in hip hop where you could still be creative and free and open and there's still cyphers and it's still about lyrics and this, that, and third. I'm brought up in that but I'm looking down the barrel of like trap music you know and Atlanta starting to kind of take over. So you would hear Big L on the radio and then turn around and hear like Yin Yang Twins and like oh, something's happening, okay you know what. What's going on and not to say that that wasn't the case, you had no limit on stuff, but it's a difference when you're in the business creating as opposed to in the 90's you're looking at it from a distance. So your enemy's like oh, this is going to change, so now I need to do some of that. I need to at least learn what that looks like and what that feels like because that's now that's finna be my competition right so it really became like you know to make a you know parallel to the martial arts. It really became like an arms race of learn these different techniques, acquire these different skillsets, acquire these different weapons to be commercially successful, to set yourself apart in this arena. It became a kumite, right? It became like a tournament and it was like oh, shit, so some of my skillsets got steered and my creativity got steered toward creating commercial product but at the same time I'm completely a backpack MC still doing mixtapes this whole time doing mixtapes doing like just crazy things that would never get played on the radio like can I rap like Biggie Smalls? I'm gonna see if I can rap like do 10 songs like Biggie Smalls and see what happens you know and these bars and these lyrics how complicated can I let me do a six layer on to entendre let me do this like all this other stuff that the industry doesn't give a fuck about right? But I'm doing that in parallel, too.
It's like I always had these two careers. I was reading Apple Music, their blurb on me one time and it was like something of the effect where "Lupe Fiasco is an underground rapper that found mainstream success but is also a mainstream rapper who found underground success." It's like in these two worlds completely separate, two completely set for separate sets of goals and I'm still able to do a "Show Goes On" but then turn around and do a "Mural," right and it even it trips me out right because sometimes I don't know. Sometimes I don't know what I'm doing and then it becomes like yeah, that feels good though you know so it feels good not to have a goal, not to have an intention just to purely create and free flow and and be mushin no shin, right, to have no-mind and just create from whatever comes out. And so you get albums like that where it's like I'll have songs where it's like ah, whatever comes up, you just land it, sticks. Then the very next song is like structured format three verses you know, half of a third verse with a singing bridge to close that off and then double the hook and then ad-libs for this and then make sure it's very structured and then the next song will be this wild ass fucking concept with three beats. So that type of creative process for me, it doesn't work all the time, it doesn't transfer easily out into other arenas. I'm learning how to do that now and project that type of approach to business or something outside of the sphere of music. So I feel somewhat handicapped but also feels somewhat free, so it's just kind of like.
Erik Allan 	I love it, that's beautiful. You're experimenting, and you're trying new things, and free-flowing and seeing what arrives. Have you ever had it where one of these experiments you run in your creative process turns out something that you're like meh, it's okay, but then it just rips like—I know that's happened to us a couple of times we're right this is a throwaway video it's probably not gonna and then it goes viral. We're like how did that happen? I thought it was garbage. Does that ever happen in your process?
Lupe Fiasco 	Yeah, sure. It happens in reverse, too. I mean, it's happened a few times, I mean. I hesitate to... y'know, because part of my experience has been to eliminate the mysticism of things. We were born into a household that practiced Islam but also interfacing with all of these different faiths and these different ideas and technologies and stuff like that. And so there's a lot of like mysticism attached to the martial arts practice in certain styles in certain schools, right. The head instructor, he laid out a mat on top of blades of grass and sat on the grass and didn't bend any of the blades like that. That didn't happen but it's part of the programming the hyperbole of what we do you know of the okinawan, the secret techniques, and stuff like that. Even things like chi and and what that means and some people get really wild with it, go way out the box with it, and so for me it's been a process of like when you get to the like no what is it really? Like what were we trying to do? It's oh, we're just trying to have a better story than the next school, or this style was generated in a time where there was a lot of superstition. There was no technology, there was no scientific method, there was no of this other kind of stuff. So for me, that's how they expressed this particular experience or this particular feeling right because the only things that they had at their time—this is true even to today in modern times. There's people who live in certain cultural silos where they only express the world through the things that they know. And it may come across as very either overly complicated or very primitive. And you have to kind of find or hopefully you find some type of universal language that everybody can kind of agree with that eliminates a lot of that mysticism.
So for me, it's been this thing like eliminated as much of that kind of mysticism from the practice and get down to like, how does this really work and does this accomplish the goal. And so there is something to say that not knowing what you're doing leads to these very interesting or you're not managing your expectations or you manage your expectations wrongly and then kind of luck took over right and it's like oh, it just happened we know I knew but then also you might be unconsciously somebody else might come in and be able to look at what you're doing and see the structure in it and why it works and express kind of like yes, it's this, this, this. Your timing, right, when did you put it out you know was there a lot of competition in that space how what was your SO what do they call it S-O-E, S-E-A, whatever?
Erik Allan 	SEO?
Lupe Fiasco 	Unconsciously, that had a place to do with it, the subject matter you know sometimes we get we get too caught up in these highfalutin, high technical things and we kind of lose people. Then we just do something very basic it's very simple you know then it becomes like oh yeah, that's fucking amazing right? But it's like that's the dumbest thing I've ever done. I'm the dumbest thing that's ever been born, so it's like there you go.
But no, it's that piece of like I don't really believe anymore in this kind of concept of things just happen. I feel that there's a structure and an explanation for everything and part of that comes from, related backs of martial arts. Is this martial arts experience of this thing like the okinawan and these secret techniques and what is actually happening you know and what's the actual goal of this and what is it meant to do. Where is the mysticism and kind of, what's the goal of the secrecy right some of it was like I'mma teach you some bullshit that doesn't work so you're not able to go and you know start your own school. So this is the sensei, or the instructor, trapping his students in his particular program and then telling them you can't ever go compete with another school. That happens today. And it'll teach you some shit that is like. And then when they're about to die or when they're about to reach a certain level you've been in the school for 50 years you know or 15 years or 20 years, then they'll show you the bunkai, then they'll show you the application. Then they'll say don't worry about this right, do this this, is all you ever needed to do. You're saying like sensei, I'mma—you motherfucking—I will beat your ass right now for putting me through 10 years when you could have taught me this shit in two weeks. But then it becomes what's the goal in that. So anyway you know I feel that that you know nothing just happens you know it's like if we go back and really analyze the successes of the things that we did, we'll see that there is a structure that's tapping into very real and visceral things that people respond to.
Kyle Mahadeo	Isn't that so true though, it's so true to even entrepreneurship. How you can do all of these different things but somebody can look at it and then just be like this is the path, this is the avenue, and it just oh, it's always about simplifying things. That Apple quote simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. I think that's such a universal thing because even in martial arts you can have all these techniques, all of these different applications, but at the end of the day it's just distance, time, and you know, a bit of attributes at some point in time as well too and how you use those things can uh dictate how you do in a fight. One thing in martial arts is is adversity we find that a commonality amongst a lot of our people we talk to and people within our community is how they deal with adversity. How do you deal with adversity and what do you do to get through it?
Lupe Fiasco 	A lot of y'all got it really, really good. A lot of the modern martial arts guys who've been in it for. I don't even say deuce has been there for 20 years, right. Like I've been doing it for 25 years like man you had it good because if you were doing this shit in the 80's my guy when there was no rules and no insurance and you met up with somebody like my dad or some of some of his instructors. Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah you're running barefoot in the snow. You're doing that. You're jumping out of the second floor of this building you're doing that like why are we doing this? You're doing that. We're dive rolling over these cars from concrete to concrete, we're doing that. You're gonna reach into this boiling pot of water and pull out this stone that's at the bottom that's been sitting there for six hours like you're finna do that in the ghetto on the West Side of Chicago. With people driving around and cars and banging music and you're in the hood, you're in a gi getting laughed at. Reaching into a gigantic cauldron in the fucking boiling water trying to pull this stone out the bottom and so I say that to say like again it was adversity. There was no like it wasn't like there's martial arts and then let's incorporate some adversity into it it was like no we're gonna start with adversity, like that's what you do. You're a black belt in adversity and then there's some there's some martial arts attached to that right because it was rough like the training was so hard, man, like super hard. The first dojo I remember when you go in there was it was dark and it was a gigantic poster of Mas Oyama soon as you walk in, big bald head man. It's the famous picture where he's punching out the candle like sayka sookie. Punching out the candle but that's what see this menacing monster and if you know anything about kenshinkai karate it's the roughest karate period. That's period, there's nothing else that compares. Maybe shorinji kempo, maybe, but in terms of just karate, it's fucking for maniacs.
Kyle Mahadeo	People who love to get smashed hit all the time.
Lupe Fiasco 	Let's fight, full contact, right now. Every class like why are we doing this, why don't we just do some kind of right? But that's guy you know in your school. It's not like you know it's not like jigoro kano I mean we had we had pictures of all the sensei's you know that was there but it was like the biggest poster was Mas Oyama and I was like yeah you're coming here to get hurt like you're coming here to die like you're coming here to punch this wall you're coming in here to body train you're coming in a body hardened right. Pure violent you know situation. So for us the adversity was always there so that's why I say we don't when I say we all and all my all my dad's students will attest to this. It's not just me like talking shit, right. Like they'll all attest to this. It's like oh that's nothing like y'all did what that was your special training day like we did that shit everyday. Like you walked on rocks today like yeah we had a rock you couldn't get to the dojo unless you walked through some rocks. Like very sharp stones that fucked your feet up. That's why that's why I train on concrete be like how the fuck can you do that? I was like what do you mean how can you not do that right.
So we had adversity built in from the jump. So now when I look at certain situations and certain things in the world it's very easy for me to go full cycle very quickly, very calmly. And I say that in that you know you generate that discipline because like oh, I'm finna get hit by this car. Okay, let's go. Or I'm gonna have to run through this fire right and it's like, okay. And you see people who like even when people are doing breaking right they're like ah!, and we'll get up there and just like pop! You're supposed to be, our class motto was "always ready," which is related to EI but it was like you were tuned to be at that level all the time but not to the point where it breaks you, right. Where you just absorbs, you got to know how to release, you got to know how to heal as much as you know how to destroy. So we would get introduced to all this adversity physically, spiritually, mentally, just taxing shit like my dad was. Like this dude's a sociopath. But then you would hit these plateaus and these limits so you break through these barriers and you're like "yo, I could do anything." And then you you put that on business, it's like I could do anything like. You're going to lose a million dollars, so? That's adversity, right, like you're risking losing. So you mean you're going to stand on your morals and lose this record deal? It's like yeah, there's other record deals. So you're going to stand on this, losing, you're going to fight this losing battle? Yeah, right, yeah I am 'cause that's some badass shit to do right.
Erik Allan 	That's that authenticity, that's what makes you an authentic individual. I mean you know who you are, you've gone through, walked through the coals, and I really feel like martial arts does that just to everyone who does choose that path. And this is why we're so passionate about sharing and spreading and celebrating all martial arts and encouraging people that who haven't tried training in martial arts to get involved. And the community keeps growing and I think community is such an important part. I'd be curious to get your thoughts on how you built your community of followers and fans that have stood by. You've got some of the strongest, most dedicated fans in the game. How did you build that community?
Lupe Fiasco 	Well like Mas Oyama built the kyokushin kai community, right. I think kyokushin kai is if not—I don't know if it still is—but one of the largest you know martial arts associations in the world. I think millions of members if I'm not mistaken I could be I don't want to jump into it but it's like that like these martial arts associations will have. How many members do you have like we have two million members wow you know things like that you know how many people do BJJ? Or how many people do gracie style BJJ right? Oh, probably millions. How many people were part of the the kendo federation of Japan whatever you know two million, three million, right. It's like how do you maintain that type of fanbase if you want to call it that right. Again, trying to relate everything back to the martial arts.
You got to put them through trials and tribulations, man. And me and my fans have been through a lot of shit together. And I have fans that are just kind of on a periphery. There are fans of "Show Goes On," and that's it. They don't even know the mixtapes exist you know type thing. And then I got fans that are with it all they've listened to every song, every mixtape every they've done the due diligence to find all the easter eggs and they sit and they process this fucking wall of lyrics and they come out the other side black belts, you know what I'm saying? Like they together and it's crazy to people and my fans will throw around this term GOTA. So they'll turn the Greatest of All Time and people like. And then you'll see like a commercial list I'm not even on the list of rappers you know it'll be every other guy but me and if I am, I'll be, I'll be 40 or 50 or something like that. And my fans were like nah, that dude's the best lyricist of all time, right and they're like how? And then they'll write themselves you know and then proceed to lay out how over the course of 20 years and hundreds of songs that he—me—has touched on all these different things, all these different layers, connected this onto this this album was connected to this scheme plot was connected to this. This means six things this means eight this means twelve things. And they're be like yo, how can you even compare that to your top five? Who has yeah they did this and they did that but Lupe did it six times, right? Or Lupe did it this or did that. But because it's so niche because it requires so much patience and so much discipline and so much adversity to sit there and read through. I mean, it's songs and me being an asshole don't give you the punchline. I'm not telling you what that means right. Like c'mon man, you're killing me. You'll see people who post up on social media and they're like, "Lupe I've been listening to this song for six years and I was driving in the car and I drove past this gas station and I looked at the name of the gas station and I learned that that was the reference for the song and it blew my fucking mind." So it's that type of like dedication and then reward that comes out of processing and staying within it. And it's not all my songs, but it is a lot of my songs I like that so my fans they've been through that rough hardcore training broken bones, callous the hands, did all of that throughout the shoulder the whole piece. And I think that's why I have that really solid core, you know, the fans and they come in they come out and I keep it very real with them, you know i don't I don't sugarcoat shit with them. I understand that it's a 50/50 relationship with my fans. I'm gonna give you 50, you're going to give me your 50, but I'm gonna give you my 50. I'm not your fucking servant. I'm someone who you choose to participate in and in response to that, I overindulge you. So I'm gonna give you an album and ten songs on the way to giving the album you're gonna pay for the album, but these ten songs are free. And when you come out to a concert yeah you only gonna pay 30 bucks but I'm finna perform for two hours you know and that's been the story of my fans. So I have fans who came been the 40 shows you know on some like rock and roll shit like yeah, I've been to every Metallica show ever. There's Lupe fans like yeah, I've been to 30 shows, I've been to 45 shows. I have every single album, every single mixtape, every single song every single appearance, every single day and so that's what I attributed to attributed to that because the barrier to entry to be a Lupe Fiasco fan is kinda high that the reward and the way that people attach themselves to the community is probably look is much much stronger as opposed to if I was just like a pop artist or like a one-hit wonder who may have a massive amount of kind of peripheral folks, but do they have a core of like rabid assassins who will go out and protest in front of a record label for them? So that's kind of like the difference, I think.
Kyle Mahadeo	Amazing, so we're going to be wrapping it up. I just wanted to touch on one last thing. We are actually in the process of starting a new martial art. It's called joy jitsu.
Lupe Fiasco 	Oh wait!
Kyle Mahadeo	Yes.
Erik Allan 	Joy jitsu: extracting the joy out of life.
Kyle Mahadeo	We're going to be creating a belt system for it, and what it is is that we're going to use it as a way to leverage our Budo Youth Fund and hand out belts for people who volunteer in their community or donate to our Budo Youth Fund to help kids get started in martial arts. So you could get a white belt at a certain level, or a blue, purple, brown. So it's going to be a way to give back to the community and it's going to be our way to connect our community in order to give back and that's kind of the last piece I wanted to touch on. I know you're always looking to give back to your community, and to help out. Can you just talk a little bit about your community initiatives and just let people know what you're up to?
Lupe Fiasco 	Yeah, so we had M.U.R.A.L., it started out as the Lupe Fiasco Foundation and we did a name change à la Facebook to "Mural" a few years ago and Magnifying Urban Realities and Lives. I think is the acronym, but a lot of that is my sister. So my sister's the super community activist type folk but also artist. She's a poet, she's on my album, she's a dancer. Very accomplished, has a dance troupe, and so she has this a part of my. Going back to my dad is this the full circle thing. So when you mention jiu-jitsu and the belts. I could see people like man you're just [?] People just giving out belts but they like giving our belts for nothing and this is when they fuck up because. You could give my and this is you know anecdotal and and truth kind of like from my dad is he would award black belts, or not necessarily black belts. He would award rank based on report cards, right. So if your report card was trash, yeah you wouldn't get promoted no matter how good you could kick and break and jump and holler and kiai. It's like but your grades, you're supposed to be applying all of this discipline and all of this application to all the fields of your life. And if you're not doing that, then your martial arts isn't complete. He would also promote folks who whose technique was shoddy but they had something in them, an activeness in them or a spirit in them that was above and beyond any belt that you could ever give them. And really, they should be giving belts to people. It's kind of like that piece, like these people are of such a quality of life such a quality of mind and approach that they should be awarded. You should be doing your examinations in front of them, right, as black belts. And you shouldn't be how good you can kick and punch and how good you can block and dodge and half guard and choke and blah, blah, blah. But it's like, how good can you talk to your mom? How good can you open up the door for old folks how good can you can you can you volunteer to carry someone's groceries how good can you actually you know volunteer to cook food at the homeless shelter how good are you actually at you know jiu-jitsu in the these goddamn books you know how good are you et. cetera, et. cetera, et. cetera, et. cetera, et. cetera, et. cetera, et. cetera, right.
So it got to a point where you would see people getting their purple belt or their whatever. I really only care about three belts: white, brown, and black, to be honest, but we had this array of belts and it's like you know you will see kids getting the yellow belt very fast. And it was like well, you know he doesn't even know this kata or that kata. This kind or that kata and I'm like well, do you know this kind of in that kata? And I got him, like I can study, well he can study too. He might learn it faster than you, so now what? We're not here totally for just technique and skill, and I think it comes from my dad having that first school and then having a second school where his first school was all rough and tough, technique martial art mastery. But everybody went to the dark side. Everybody went to the streets, they took all that technique and technology and became the world's greatest villains and criminals and super villains and shit. And it was like, well it has to be something beyond just this technique that needs to be impressed into people, and that needs to be observed and examined and rewarded as well. So your point about joy jitsu and that's what I think is fucking brilliant. So my sister handles a lot of the community service work, and it's really as I get opportunities, I filter it that way and do certain things that make sense. But as much as I can affect change and whether it's giving somebody a coat or doing something that's a little bit more high-end, like trying to raise awareness on linguistics and rap which may seem like well that's not like giving out coats. It's like yeah, it's not. It's about showing rappers that what they do—because there's millions of rappers right—showing that what they do goes above and beyond just entertainment you know if you can interface and plug into you know the science of what you're doing and learn how to apply it in a universal way, then you have impact and community service above and beyond just giving out a bunch of coats to people during wintertime once a year. If I can get you to be observant of the power of the word on a daily basis your community all you gotta do is talk and you'll be serving the community because you're talking to him in a specific way with a specific set of intentionalities.
So, community service is always part of the program. It's always been a part of our martial arts program. It's baked into everything that I do in one way or another. Whether it be from the content of my songs or what have you, so. Even me posting up on Instagram doing martial arts is still about showing people you know this shit looks corny. I know it looks corny, right, because people have told me it's look corny. Because we've had to do this. These people are walking around in Nikes and track suits and you're in a karate uniform doing kias speaking in Japanese in the middle of the hood, you're gonna stand out like a sore thumb. But, can you get past that? If you can get past that, oh my god. All of your limitations, all of your social inefficiencies, all of your insecurities, all that shit goes away just by putting on that gi and stepping out into the world that doesn't wear a gi.
Kyle Mahadeo	And honestly, that's one of our biggest missions, is to help people with that bridge. Because fusing that fashion, that look, that aesthetic, that cool style, that way to represent yourself and not feel like you're darkening out dorking out in front of all your friends. So that's really what we try to do as well, too.
Erik Allan 	Man, Lupe you have tied so many dots together for us and this has been such an incredible conversation and we're never surprised with how martial arts influences people's lives and just listening to the stories you tell of your upbringing and everything that you've gone through, I can totally see how it has been so pivotal in the man that you've become. So thank you for taking the time and sharing that I'm inspired and I'm sure everyone who's listening to this is inspired as well. How can they stay in touch, follow you, any other places you'd like them to go to stay in touch with Lupe?
Lupe Fiasco 	Oh man, LupeFiasco.com, we've over the years we've had shit all over the place but past few years we've got our stuff together, especially because now we're an independent record company, I'm an independent artist.
Kyle Mahadeo	Congratulations.
Lupe Fiasco 	Thank you, man. LupeFiasco.com, you can get show information, concerts, merchandise, all of the album releases and streaming information there. And then the social medias at lupefiasco. And I post up time to time me in my backyard doing some karate moves so you can check that out as well and then more more things to come. More things on the horizon. Next year should be really good, so make sure you stay tuned in.
Kyle Mahadeo	Amazing.
Erik Allan 	Amazing, fantastic, we will Lupe, thank you so much, and we will be in touch.
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Category:2021 interviews
Category:Podcasts