Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in 1967 by Jann Wenner and Ralph J. Gleason in San Francisco, California. American rapper Lupe Fiasco was interviewed in 2007, 2012, and 2024, the latter with longtime record producer Soundtrakk.Hoard, Christian (February 8, 2007). "Catching Up with Grammy Nominee Lupe Fiasco". Rolling Stone.Trammell, Matthew (August 27, 2012). "Q&A: Lupe Fiasco on Tupac, Album Leaks and Leaving the Game". Rolling Stone.Gee, Andre (July 5, 2024). "Lupe Fiasco Walks Us Through His Amy Winehouse-Inspired Battle-Rap Album 'Samurai'". Rolling Stone. The publication reviewed six of his albums, from Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor to Drogas Light. On average, he scored 66.7% (20/30).
== Articles ==
=== 2006 ===
Lupe Fiasco is backstage in Chicago, running from security guards. A few seconds earlier, he was goofing
around with his friends in a competition he calls "Feats of Strength and Agility." Eventually the guards realize that the
lithe twenty-four-year-old in the purple A Life sneakers is the same guy who just finished headlining the Vice Intonation Festival for an adoring crowd of his hometown fans. Fiasco laughs it off, and as he moseys past a group of fans toward the parking lot, one yells, "Listen to Lup'! He's the future of Chicago! He's the future of rap!" After
perching on the roof of his Land Rover, Fiasco sets to analyzing the pressures associated with such a title. "No
matter what happens, I'll still be the future," he says. "Nobody said if it would be good or bad. I'm just the future."
In September, Fiasco will release the year's most hotly anticipated hip hop debut, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor, which
already has its first major hit in the form of the skate-rap anthem "Kick Push." But the full-length, executive-produced by Jay-Z and featuring collaborations with the Neptunes and Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda, isn't Lupe's first taste of the limelight. As a teenager, he was a member of Da Pak, who were briefly signed to Epic. More recently, he started his own production company, 1st and 15th, whose credits include Beyoncé's "Hip-Hop Star." And last year, fellow Chicagoan Kanye West invited Fiasco to guest on his single "Touch the Sky."
Offers from major labels started rolling in, but Fiasco insisted that the album be released on the 1st and 15th imprint, and he shopped around until he found a label, Atlantic, willing to accommodate his demands. "The music business is trash," says Fiasco. "I love music, I love business, but I hate the music business. I vowed I would never sign if I didn't have 100 percent creative control. Even though I was pretty much an unknown, I've been around for years. I didn't just pop out of nowhere."
Lupe was born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco and raised in a rough part of Chicago's West Side. His father, a martial-arts grandmaster who was on the U.S. Olympic judo team in 1980, wanted his son to be able to defend himself and had Lupe taking martial-arts classes from the age of three. "The thing about martial arts is that it disciplines you to recognize when a conflict is coming and evade it," says the rapper, who owns four black belts. "But, yes, I can kill a man with my bare hands if I have to."
As a kid, Fiasco says he didn't like hip-hop and considered it negative, obnoxious music that degraded women. But rappers like Nas convinced him he could use the genre to tell stones with social merit. On Food & Liquors "American Terrorist," he examines the dark history of slavery and genocide in America. "I feel I have the responsibility - since I have this soapbox - to not only entertain but to educate," says Fiasco, a devout Muslim whose only admitted vice is a jones for cutting-edge streetwear. "The world is in a really terrible place, and you have to stand back and ask why we're in this situation."
It's a far cry from the catchy "Kick Push," which Fiasco dropped first to disarm listeners and open their ears to what he might do next. "I had a lady tell me she thought 'Kick Push' was about giving birth," he says with a chuckle. "A lot of my songs have double meanings, but that song is genuinely about skateboarding. I wanted to come out with a story, because stories have more longevity. They don't really pigeonhole you. I can reinvent myself on the next record. I want people to say, 'Lupe is always reinventing.'"
From the hood of his Land Rover, he gives a smirk and pushes his glasses back up his nose. "I've done everything in the music business," he says. "I've been on world tours, I was flooded in ice at nineteen. Now I'm good. I'm just hopping over fences and playing with skateboards."Morse, Russell (September 21, 2006). Rolling Stone (1009), p. 22.
=== 2007 ===
Rolling Stone	Did any of your buddies call to congratulate you?
Lupe Fiasco 	I actually hit Kanye to thank him, and he hit me back just to say congratulations.
Rolling Stone	Did Kanye have any advice on an acceptance speech?
Lupe Fiasco 	No. And I probably wouldn't take it if he did [laughs].
Rolling Stone	"Kick, Push" is a great song. Were you happy the Grammy people recognized it?
Lupe Fiasco 	I was. A lot of people didn't believe in that record because it was a [hip-hop] record about skateboarding. But later, mothers would run up to me and be like, "You got my son skating!"
Rolling Stone	Who else would you like to see win some Grammys?
Lupe Fiasco 	I want to see Mary J. Blige win a bunch. She was one of the first superstars that got behind me. Backstage at a show, she was like, "I love 'Kick, Push.'"
Rolling Stone	Any artists you'd like to meet at the Grammys?
Lupe Fiasco 	Are Pink Floyd going to be there? I want to meet them. I'm a big fan.
Rolling Stone	As a Muslim, you don't drink. If you win, how will you celebrate?
Lupe Fiasco 	We'll throw a party. I won't drink or smoke. I'll probably be playing with these toys I like, these Japanese robots.
Rolling Stone	Who would you most like to collaborate with outside of hip-hop?
Lupe Fiasco 	I would love to reinterpret Johnny Cash. I think I'm going to do it as a mix tape. Johnny Cash is the dopest storyteller ever – him and Nas. I wouldn't sample his music, but I'd borrow his melodies. It would be about reinterpreting his lyrics, putting his lyrics in an urban setting, extending his stories. You know, like "A Boy Named Sue, 2007."
=== 2012 ===
Rolling Stone	Why make a sequel to Food & Liquor now? What was your thought process behind creating a Part Two?
Lupe Fiasco 	What are you interested in trying to figure out, beyond that? I don't really look into it that deeply. I think people might be overthinking it. It wasn't that much of a decision either way, like, "Oh, we're going to take people back to the first album," or, "Oh, I'm going to take advantage of people relating it to the first album." It wasn't that serious. I guess it's serious enough for people to ask questions about it, but maybe you should answer it for yourself, too. Not to be a jerk about it, but specifically for that one thing, it's not that deep. It's just Food & Liquor 2.
Rolling Stone	In the "Bitch Bad" video, there's a sequence during the second verse that shows a rapper and a girl dancing. Were you referencing anyone specific there? The girl is styled like Nicki Minaj.
Lupe Fiasco 	OK. Nicki Minaj isn't the only girl with pink hair. Lady Gaga I think had pink hair at one point. To tell the story, that's what a hip-hop video looks like. The general hip-hop video looks like that. That's the images you see. Go on World Star [Hip-Hop], nine times out of 10 it's going to look like that. It's not taking shots at anybody, it's not meant to be a diss record. I don't want to get off into the distractions. That's a distraction, to be like, "Oh man, are you dissing Nicki Minaj?" That's a distraction from the point of what the video's about. That's what happened with "Around My Way." People got caught up with "Man, Pete Rock don't like it?" as opposed to, "The suicide rate in Pine Ridge is really 50 percent?" So I'd rather not indulge. If you feel that way, make sure you say you feel that way. Or Rolling Stone feels that way. Don't say Lupe said that.
Rolling Stone	It sounds like in this conversation, and at this point in your career, you're being cautious. Not that you're holding anything back, but in terms of being particular with the messages you put out and how you put them out.
Lupe Fiasco 	Nah, not really. I think it's more that I'm 30 and I want to do something else. I don't really have time to get caught up in what other people think about other things. That's not me being cautious. If you feel that way, why don't you do it? If you feel that's what the video is about, then why don't you say it? That's not my intention. When you do that 15, 20 times a day, you get fed up. Not with fans, but with the industry. You get fed up with interviewers and magazines, you get fed up with blogs, that whole piece. Like, my man, why are you interviewing me if you already got the answers to the questions in your head? Not speaking of you, just in general. At a certain point you get tired of beating a dead horse. What else do you want me to say? What else can I say? Everything that I've said has already been like . . . the facts have never been debated, it's always why I said it, or how you feel about it, as opposed to exactly what we're actually talking about. I'll talk to my fans before I talk to an interviewer about it, if I'm at a show talking to 10,000 fans, as opposed to filtering it through a magazine. That sort of gets played out.
Rolling Stone	Right now you're talking to a fan and an interviewer, and I think the discussion you're trying to have with "Bitch Bad" is an important one. There's a point made about Internet culture in the video, during a scene where young girls are watching an uncensored video online. You mentioned World Star Hip-Hop earlier – 10 years ago, a kid may have had to stay up late and watch BET Uncut, but now it's all accessible. Are those messages changing or getting worse because of the mediums?
Lupe Fiasco 	I don't know, man, to be honest. I wasn't making a statement about promoting certain images through their sites – I was just using that to set the scene. It wasn't a comment on Internet culture or anything like that. It wasn't like, "World Star Hip-Hop is the worst thing ever because they show naked women!" Picasso painted naked women. Was he the worst thing ever? Which would be World Star's response to somebody who would say that. There are naked women walking around Africa who were walking around like that for 10,000 years.
To tell a story you have to have character, you have to have a setting. I wanted it to be as real and realistic as possible. When you go on the Internet, there are clean versions, but you rarely see clean versions because that's the point of the Internet. It's free speech. Say whatever you want. It's not governed by the FCC. Who am I to tell them what they can't do and then get pissed when someone tells me what I can't do?
Rolling Stone	So your goal wasn't to indict anyone, but to argue that these are possible effects of these images and messages? A kid seeing his mom call herself a "bad bitch" may internalize that and be affected down the line by it?
Lupe Fiasco 	Nah, I'm not saying that, either. It's in the third verse: "This is a disclaimer, I'm not trying to teach you a lesson." I'm not trying to say this is what's going to happen, or potentially what's going to happen. Because you don't know, the characters are fictional, based on true events. I know personally what has affected me, but that's me personally. I've talked about it before and I'm not going to talk about it again. Everybody has their relationship with how things are going to affect them. It was moreso to just get you to think. Not to teach you a lesson or tell you what to do. I don't think people thought that's what it was. I think people just felt, "Oh, somebody's addressing something in hip-hop and pop culture at large. OK, what do we think about that?" Some people don't care, some people have never heard the song, some people haven't seen the video. Some people adore it and will write a dissertation about it. But at the end of the day I'm not really trying to tell you anything. I'm not trying to get you to do anything.
Rolling Stone	Let's talk about the rest of the album. There are live instruments on a few tracks that you did with your band. How would you describe the overall sound?
Lupe Fiasco 	There wasn't really a full musical arc to it. I was more caught up in the concept of the great American rap album, as opposed to sonically how it would go. I just got beats that felt good, that sounded good. There were some tracks specifically – not album-wide – like "Bitch Bad," that sounded like a beat that would be out now. Not 10 years ago, or 15 or 20 years ago. There's other records like "Around My Way," which is a remake of a record that came out 20 years ago. I can't say that there's a consistent theme throughout the album, but it's modern. That's the best way to describe it – it's a modern album with modern sounds, as opposed to it being a classic boom-bap record or a neo-soul record or a trap music record or whatever. It just sounds modern.
Rolling Stone	Lyrically, you have tracks that are about American history and songs described as straight-up "rappity rap." You've always been openly confident about your lyrical ability. Do you still feel competitive?
Lupe Fiasco 	Nah, for me it's art. I do this for the sake of myself. It's a selfish process. I don't really have any expectations from anyone for your comments or your reviews or your previews. Not to say that I won't see it, but that's not the point. I'm happy rapping a song like "Form Follows Function" for myself, the same way I can sit and watch a movie by myself or go to an art gallery by myself. Who do you listen to at the end of the day? Who do you look for to give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down about a certain thing? I don't really look to the public atmosphere for that kind of validation. I'm trying to find that validation in myself with my own art and put it on display, and if people like it, they like it. If they don't, they don't. Some stuff I don't even put out. I'll just be home, happy, creating something for myself, and then ball it up and throw it in the trash. It's less about trying to prove something or get on somebody's list or make a fan happy or make a hater mad or convert a non-believer. That's not the case for me anymore. Mixtapes, The Cool, whatever. We're done now. You get it, I get it, we're done. If you want to participate in this album, fine, if you don't, that's just as fine. I'll go on tour, go on vacation and come back next summer.
Rolling Stone	With previous albums, you've had a history of having trouble with leaks. How do you plan on beating the leak this time around?
Lupe Fiasco 	You just don't give it to anybody. You can't control it once you turn it into the label, so there's the expectation that it'll leak a week before the album comes out. That's the world we live in. But up until now, no one has a copy. As an artist, you have to strategize to make the final, for-sale product [have] more value, and more than music. When people get the physical album in their hand, it's a piece of art in itself. There's no way that the label should've let this happen. There's no way in hell that they should've let this physical CD, the way it's designed, come out. But it's out. That in itself for me makes that special. So whoever has the download, yeah, you have the music, but everyone has the music. You don't have this. You're missing out. We have to make the physical music a little more valuable instead of just having a download link and a bunch of songs you downloaded from some torrent site. People try to make the music value-less, and I don't think we're going to stop that train, but the one thing that they can't devalue are things that are in the outside world. The digital space is different, but the physical space still carries value. That gives me satisfaction. You downloaded it for free, but you're still missing out on the whole experience.
Rolling Stone	You've said James Baldwin was an inspiration for this album. What do you think about his legacy today? Why was he your muse this time around?
Lupe Fiasco 	I think Baldwin is overshadowed. I don't think Baldwin's in the conversation anymore. So that's why I tried to bring him back around, because he was such a powerful figure. He was a homosexual, he was an atheist, he was black, he was a writer, he was a down brother, he lived in Paris and grew up in the slums of Harlem. And he was a preacher. So he had all these things that made him Public Enemy Number One, but he was also loved and adored by the public at the same time. If you were just a card-carrying religious person, you'd shun him because he was gay. If you were a card-carrying white person, you'd shun him because he was black. And through all of that, he was smarter than anybody. He's had more of an impact for me than everybody. He's such a polarizing figure, but being so polarizing, his sense was so common. Very strong and powerful common sense about common-sense things. He challenged the notion that common sense had to be simple.
Rolling Stone	What is some of the source material you looked to for inspiration on this album?
Lupe Fiasco 	Howard Zinn's The Bomb. Steven Pimpare's A People's History of Poverty in America, which is based on Zinn's A People's History of the United States. There were a myriad of Baldwin speeches. The sample on the intro to the album is from Take This Hammer, a documentary that follows Baldwin around in the late Fifties. Now I'm reading things that back up what I was saying on the album – books like Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco.
Rolling Stone	So you'd say recording this album was a learning experience as well as a creative one?
Lupe Fiasco 	Not necessarily, because a lot of this stuff I already knew. It was more for the sake of the people who are going to say, "That's not true, where'd you get that from? You're making that up," to have some cites – an index or an appendix where I could look at you and say," This book, that book, this guy, that speech reaffirms what I'm saying." There are certain songs where I literally read a book and wrote a song about it. I needed to know the specifics. I had to read The Bomb to write a song about the nuclear weapons program.
Rolling Stone	We hear a lot about America on this album, but we don't hear about Chicago. On the "Hood Now" outro, you mention Kanye West being front row at fashion shows. With artists like Kanye pushing hip-hop into places it hasn't been, and Chicago still suffering in many ways, how do you feel about the city now and the music that's coming out of it?
Lupe Fiasco 	No comment. It's easier and safer and smarter for me to say no comment. I addressed America. Chicago is in America. These aren't site-specific. There's some examples that stand out more than others, like Pine Ridge, South Dakota or Camden, New Jersey or Detroit, that stand out physically because they're wastelands, but it's systematic. If you go through the entire country, you'll see a reflection of the same things. The same conformity, the same injustices, the same discrimination – the same happy times, the same good times. You see it all, because it's America. There's not one place that's foreign in America, if that makes any sense. When I talk about no-space-specific, I'm talking about everywhere.
Rolling Stone	On "Put Em Up," there's a line where you say, "Only Tupac is topping me now." What did you mean by that?
Lupe Fiasco 	I think everyone sees Tupac as an inspiration. "Tupac Back" – I didn't write that song, Rick Ross and Meek Mill wrote that song. Everybody equates themselves to who they feel is the pioneer of their thing, whether it be folk singers that look back to Bob Dylan or reggae people who look back to Bob Marley. These head figures that had a social and cultural pitch to them – not saying they were saints in any way, but within their genre they did something that transcended their genre. Everybody reveres Tupac. Tupac Shakur is a great man, a great figure, a great person. He's Martin Luther King status. The same admiration I have for Baldwin, I have for Tupac.
Rolling Stone	Yesterday at the session, you mentioned you had one more album after this and you were out. Are you happy right now?
Lupe Fiasco 	Commercially, yes. Commercially, I don't care. I don't really have any expectations.
Rolling Stone	But personally?
Lupe Fiasco 	Personal, I choose to not comment on. How I feel personally I don't think is for public consumption anymore. Professionally, I'm aware I have accolades, but the commercial space is one I don't want to be in anymore. I'll still make music, but make music that is art. I think you'll slowly see that with the last record on Atlantic. You'll start seeing specks of it on Great American Rap Album, just the way we curate certain things, like the "Bitch Bad" video and the cover art. And once we really get into the rollout of the album, it'll all start to culminate on the last album, which is called Skulls. You'll see, like, "Oh, wow, he's not kidding." I'm really about to kick back and just do music for the sake of doing music, as opposed to doing music for the sake of doing an interview or shooting a video to it or having some kind of commercial incentive behind doing it.
Rolling Stone	So exactly what message do you want to get across or emphasize about this album or where you are right now?
Lupe Fiasco 	If I could control that, I'd write the interview myself. I'd write all my interviews myself if I wanted to have that type of control, but I can't.
Rolling Stone	I get the feeling that you're not too fond of interviews.
Lupe Fiasco 	These are my last interviews. We're doing a big documentary for the album, which will hopefully come out, if not the album day, hopefully a few days after – we've just got to finish it. That will be my piece de resistance about who Lupe is and what his music is, and that's it. After that, you'll have to talk to the publicist.
=== 2024 ===
"Samurai" 	"Samurai"
Soundtrakk 	I was digging, I found that sample, and it moved me. I channeled RZA with that one, I went Wu-Tang with it. I sent it to Lu and it had certain sections, [and] once he finished the song he sent it back. And then we tried to replay the sample; Chilly didn't like the replay. I used the layers, the flutes and horns, and live bass and synths, and arranged it and sectioned it off, and created a buildup which turned out really nice. It was just a beautiful sample.
Lupe Fiasco 	[I wanted it to] lyrically be a portrait of Amy Winehouse. And that's where you hear certain references and stuff, maybe certain British slang or something there, or just cultural pieces and situations. And then imagining and exaggerating other pieces and parts. But it was just meant to serve as if it never turned into an album. It'd just be like a dope song. And if I never told you that it was about Amy Winehouse, it could have just been about anybody, etc. But once it became like, "Oh no, this is going to become a project," then it became, "Oh, that's the optimal introduction." And then you start to use that as a foundation, and then just build from there with the rest of the album.
"Mumble Rap" 	"Mumble Rap"
Lupe Fiasco 	"Samurai" starts with that Nineties boom-bap vibe. It was like, "OK, let's continue that, but I need a different version of it." Like a storytelling bit as opposed to a series of just images or concepts. "Mumble Rap" was meant to be a linear story to [inform you] this is how she got her battle-rap powers, in this weird moment with this old dude. And then here's a piece of the battle. It was meant to be a big, heavy, solid, establish the plot, establish the character [kind of song]. [The hook] is really just a reference that just became the chorus. [I did] a little bit of scatting, giving myself permission to get free with it in the feel of a jazz vocalist, where they'll scat some things out. And then you go back to it and it's like, "You know what? That is the hook. That's what it should be." As opposed to like, "Yo, let me try and suffer through trying to come up with words to make it make sense and make it fit." It's like, "No, sometimes it's that first or second pass on it."
Soundtrakk 	And on the production end, it had a Tribe Called Quest type of groove to it, but I also channeled "Ms. Fat Booty" on it, too. It was a sample I slowed down dramatically and then put a break on it. I named the beat "Tribe Bop" when I sent it, and it was purposely done Nineties [style]. [It] might've been in the same batch as the "Samurai" beat, because all these beats were made in the same year. Even if they were from different batches, I was still in my Nineties-style bag during that time.
Lupe Fiasco 	And then that's me on the trumpet, too. Underneath it was like, "Oh, I got this melody on the trumpet. Let me bang that out real quick and then just lay on top of that melody."
Soundtrakk 	[With] "Mumble Rap," Lupe arranged the whole beat. I don't think that beat was finished. I think it was a loop with the bass on it, a loop without it. He chopped the heck out of it, and I had to make the beat match what he did because he kept putting the bass in and out, wherever he felt like it should be. So he arranged the heck out of that one, for sure.
Lupe Fiasco 	Sometimes Trakk could send me just 30 seconds or something, or it might be like a minute and I'll be like, "Hey, go back and sequence that." Or I'll do a reference sequence, real heavy-handed in GarageBand or whatever. So if I go back through the sessions and I take a look, I'll be able to be like, "Oh, yeah, I did chop that one up and then I put this here." I might move certain things. So the workflow is what the workflow is, but it all starts as "Here's a little reference, let's play around with it and then build on it."
"Cake" 	"Cake"
Soundtrakk 	I started with the drum pattern, and that one was inspired by "The Glory," off of Kanye's Graduation. I did that type of bounce, tempo, and drum pattern. And then off of that I found a jazz sample, and I chopped it up DJ Premier style. I gave it to Lupe 70 percent complete. He mapped the entire song out. I don't like overproducing stuff anymore because I did that back in the day. Ten years ago I used to add a lot of stuff in the production and make it grand, but now I scaled back. But this one I felt like needed some type of big switch, big outro. So I pulled in one of my producer homies, and she came in and I had her do the outro on purpose to add contrast and tension, so we could have a nice switch and feel good. A lot of the album I did leave close to as is, but some of them I needed to find places where I wanted to keep it from being static, boring. So I had to add change-ups and contrast and a bunch.
Lupe Fiasco 	It was meant to be the record after the battle was won. "All right, cool." That's like the triumphant, talk-your-shit record. That's the purpose it served in the narrative.
"Palaces" 	"Palaces"
Soundtrakk 	Lupe was in the studio for this one. He only had the hook. When we got together it was me, him, and Chilly in the lab in Chicago. And he wrote it in front of us and told us we need to change up [the beat] for the third verse so I can have as much contrast, as much tension as I can. I added my guys, who was part of the production squad with 1st and 15th, Tremaine Jordan and Nicolas Isaiah. I wanted a hundred percent contrast, so we let them take care of that outro.
Lupe Fiasco 	"Palaces" was the only record that, from the beginning, all I had was the chorus. I didn't have any verses for it all the way up until the day we recorded. And it was the last song on the project. I had the chorus for three, four years, just sitting there. And I would just go back and listen because I knew the chorus was just, I had the same feeling when I did "Superstar." I was like, "Yo, this is a joint. This one of them ones."
When I do that, I'm very careful about the verse side of it. I take some time. That's why sometimes the projects can take years. I got some of the records sitting with just choruses on them, just waiting for that moment for the optimal version. Or if it's a whole project, what is the rest of the project doing or what has it done, and what is it missing? And then I'm going to use that record to fill in the gaps, the one that I know is a knockout at the end to cover any bases or fill in any gaps. But "Palaces" is the one that I actually didn't have. All I had was just that chorus. And then when we got in the studio together, then I started to bang everything out in that one session.
I recorded everything in my living room in LA on the cheap mic in the Garage Band. We got this big crazy studio [in Chicago], but I rarely record there. All the equipment there is super high-end, my shit all cheap. So I brought my equipment to the studio and finished the songs that were started on Garage Band and the cheap mic. And that would've been "No. 1 Headband," third verse, the second verse for "Cake," and then "Palaces."
"No. 1 Headband"	"No. 1 Headband"
Soundtrakk 	That's the oldest beat on the album. I did that in 2016. I sat down with a keyboardist and asked him to make me a "Paris, Tokyo" feel, a nineties feel. He made me that loop real quick, left it with me, and then I added my drum breaks. I decided on that one to do two different drum break techniques. I did it on "Dumb It Down" back in the day, where I kept switching back and forth between two different sets of drums every four bars. I pulled that technique back out for "No. 1 Headband," just to keep it entertaining. Also, I added a little switch-up. I pulled in another producer again to add the surprise switch up on the third verse. Same person who added the drums on the "Cake."
Lupe Fiasco 	I can't remember a hundred percent where it was supposed to be. If it was supposed to be a filler extension of "Cake" to a degree, or meant to be another battle record, almost like a final boss battle that she would've did. And then "No. 1 Headband" would've came after that. So some of the record was done in different periods for different things. The idea was the "No. 1 Headband" from Afro-Samurai, where that was his quest. It was like, "You're a Samurai, so you're on a quest to get the number one headband." So it would've been this final big boss battle and then she would've got the number one headband. But it ended up just as what it is, just sitting in the middle of the record to build upon "Cake," but just with a little bit more laid back feel.
And then you steer away a little bit from the concept and get into a more loose area, where it's not tied too much to the rest of the record, other than just thematically and some boastful stuff like that. And then the third verse is completely new. It was the last verse we did for the project. But that was about it. Sometimes when you tell stories, at least for me, you got to lighten it up a little bit in terms of the bars. So I wanted to make sure that we had at least 60% of the album that was just barred out. So I used "No. 1 Headband" for that space.
Soundtrakk 	The rest of the [beats on the] album are from 2018. This was before Drill Music in Zion, all of this production. Drill Music in Zions production is two, three years newer. I'm somewhere else right now production-wise.
Lupe Fiasco 	I got tons of [beats from Soundtrakk]. They're like time capsules. Trakk will send me a batch of joints from a particular year, [it's] almost like wine. I just let it sit and then open it up once it's mature. Certain things are full songs, maybe written but not recorded type situation. So we got a lot of different pieces and parts. Samurais one of the first projects I started through the pandemic. And then Chilly called from jail. It was like, man, I need an album. I was like, I got the Samurai thing. He's like, nah, I'm going to do something new. So we did.
"Bigfoot" 	"Bigfoot"
Lupe Fiasco 	Similar to Trakk, when Trakk be making beats and using samples and stuff like that. Some of the stuff I record or write or come up with—I would love to have such and such on here, but I know I'm not going to get it. I would like to have this person singing a chorus or I would like to have [that] person doing this. And so you might see me mimicking certain things or pretending to be a thing. And then it's like we never get that person or something don't get cleared or whatever happened, and I just leave me on there. But yeah.
"Bigfoot" was less about the battle rap space and more so just in that opera singer, jazz singer space. So you could look at it as "Bigfoot" could come after "Samurai." With all these records, they're their own records. You don't necessarily need the concept to be able to enjoy them or process them. So "Bigfoot" takes liberties in that space. But if you wanted to shoehorn into the project in terms of the narrative, it would be somewhere in that pre-getting battle rap powers-type space. You're just like an artist again. You're singing on the street for people and then you go to a show, ain't nobody really there type of thing. You're going through the trials and tribulations. But it also can serve as an end after everything's over and you come back to reality. If you listen to the end of "Mumble Rap," an alarm goes off. So the whole thing was a dream. You're out of the concept after "Mumble Rap" and back into the real world. So you can take liberties to move it around. It's a little bit more modular. But that was the piece, that real-world snap back to reality.
Soundtrakk 	I was in my piano chopping mode with that one. There's a lot of chopped pianos all over this album. I had a break. This one's a slower BPM, more of a slower bounce. I stopped overproducing stuff and making stuff grand and adding. This one, I decided to do that. I brought the whole production team called Open Session. They helped me out with Drill Music in Zion as well. I brought them in on this track in particular and had them inject a lot, add a lot of extra production on this one. The second verse [is] me by myself if you want to hear what the original beat sounded like. But the rest of it is them infused in it.
This is a team production piece on the album. I wanted to add a different energy because I don't want the same energy over and over again. I tried my best to have the energy switch. So [on] this one I purposely added everybody onto it to throw an energy change on the album, just to keep things interesting. I know the album is cohesive and it all ties together. But I tried my best to give it as much variation as I could with this. That one involved five different producers.
"Outside" 	"Outside"
Lupe Fiasco 	Lyrically, "Outside" served as the battle was over. In my mind, it was a whole scene where it was like she trying to get out of the club, people [are] talking to her and she's having these rap conversations with these people. If you listen to the end of "Mumble Rap," it's like, "Hey, Shorty, let me come talk to you." And then there'd been some follow-up banter and that's what the record is about. It's like she's talking about who had the best verse. But somebody was outside waiting and that's why there's that gap in the third verse; you switch to the perspective of the person that's outside, waiting for them to come outside. And it was a weird filler piece, but I really liked the vibe of it and just laid it. I'm surprised that "Outside" stayed on the project, to be honest. Because it's the weirdest of the records in terms of the purpose that it serves. In terms of the concept, was that it was like, "The battle's over, everybody going home, waiting for me outside."
Soundtrakk 	It was a weird sample for that one too. One of my boys told me it sounded like Mario Brothers on it. It was a jazz sample I chopped up DJ Premier style once again. Took a lot of pieces from all over the sample. I purposely did trappy, big 808 Lil Jon type of bass on it just to contrast the laid-backness of the sample. I think that's one of the slower records on the album. Most of the album, we kept it in the 90 BPMs. This one's like 83. 
And I added the same person who added drums to "Cake" on this one. I had her do some drums and I added new synths. I translated the sample into some synths and added a change-up that comes in twice in the song. I really love those parts.
"Til Eternity" 	"Til Eternity"
Lupe Fiasco 	"Til Eternity" was supposed to be somewhere in the middle of the story. This is Lupe Rabbit. This isn't me playing the role of someone. And so that's why it touches on me talking about my mom and talking about my dad in the third verse and some other things. And it was almost to take a break from the storyline and just give you some bars. Sometimes you tell a story, you got to water things down for the sake of the story.
And then I still want to have moments where people come back to the record like a "Mural" moment in Tetsuo or something where you just got this over-the-top lyrical situation. And even though a lot of the records that are in the storyline do have those lyrical moments too, it's a little bit more free when you don't have to stick to a script. But Chilly's genius putting it at the end... it's like, oh, it feels right. It feels like that's where it should be with the records that exist for it right now. As a closer, as that final nod. And it has a lot of closing themes in it. I think it summarizes and wraps up the record really nicely, and it ends on a bang as opposed to ending on a low or ending on a credit roll type feel.
Soundtrakk 	I found a beautiful piano loop, chopped it up a little bit, but mostly kept it the same. It was very beautiful to me. I went for a "Kick, Push" tempo and groove with the drums. I added the same team that I used on "Samurai," which was Greg Brookshire on the bass, Anthony Perkin on the synths, and used Crystal Torres on the trumpets and the bugle horn for a possible replay or layering. And then I just arranged it with the same approach as Samurai. I arranged it once again after I heard the complete song.
== Critical reception ==
Year	Album 	Rating	
2006	Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor 	 	
2007	Lupe Fiasco's The Cool 	 	
2011	Lasers 	 	
2012	Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1	 	
2015	Tetsuo & Youth 	 	
2017	Drogas Light 	 	
== References ==
Category:2007 interviews
Category:2012 interviews
Category:2024 interviews
Category:Magazines