Festival of Faith and Music

The Festival of Faith and Music (FFM) is a biennial conference at Calvin College. It began in 2003, and "brings together musicians, critics, journalists, musicians, artists, and listeners for three days of discussing and celebrating insightful music that explores, in some significant way, issues of faith."
In 2009, it was hosted by American philosopher and political activist Cornel West. He held a discussion with American rapper Lupe Fiasco on April 3, marking the very first time they met in person. Fiasco described it as "monumental" and a "dream come true" for him.Graff, Allison (March 13, 2009). "Faith and Music". Calvin University. Their talk was adapted into a podcast episode as part of the FFM 2009 series, published on April 8, 2009, to iTunes."Lupe Fiasco Interview by Cornel West". iTunes. 2009. Afterwards, Fiasco performed to end out the night, and West joined him on the stage for an embrace."Lupe Fiasco, Cornel West Highlight Day Two of Calvin's Festival of Faith & Music". MLive.com. April 4, 2009.
== Biography ==
Art – and especially music – is one way we understand people who are not like us. Because good art is an honest outpouring of another person's very being, our favorite performers often feel as close as friends, our favorite film characters become people we're sure we've met before. Reading a good book can be as rewarding as spending time with a close friend. Great art ushers us into minds that look very little like our own, and it somehow kills enough of our ego to convince us that this very different person is worth caring about, too. Our veils lifted, we should see the world differently, with more compassion and love.
It is not presumptive to say that the average attendee of the Festival of Faith and Music has never lived in or spent significant time around America's crumbling inner-city housing projects. These government buildings – the Marcy in Brooklyn, the Magnolia in New Orleans – are separate worlds within their cities, places where "economic bailout" and "stimulus package" mean next to nothing because, in these worlds, those terms affect nothing. These are places where the local drug kingpins give back to the community – they coach football teams, they buy groceries for their poorer neighbors. These are places where honor is placed on one's ability to keep it real, to stay true to one's roots. According to Nik Cohn in Triksta: Life and Death in New Orleans Rap, working menial jobs and serving rich folks is tantamount to losing all personal honor and dignity, to sell out to the system that's enslaved you from the very beginning.
It's a question that rappers – and anyone trying to make a living off of their art – has to ask themselves. The difference is that in popular rap music, the stakes have been dramatically raised by people outside of the game. In order to understand what makes Lupe Fiasco's music a pleasant and surprising bit of spirit, it's necessary to understand the culture which has defined him in photo-negative.
The visceral bullet play of gangsta rap grew out of honest expression of ghetto life but quickly diluted when discovered by white suburban audiences. These teenage kids were, after all, the ones with the money, the ivory hands that could shape the way the music industry conducted its business. And so, when rap music was only beginning to understand its potential as a poetic force, borne out of frustration with the injustices of America's cities, it sold its soul. Teenagers didn't want to hear about how their rich families had oppressed generations of black Americans, they wanted (and still want) the pornographic thrill of violence-from-a-distance, the kind that lets you feel like a true thug without ever having to touch a gun of your own, much less understand why you started firing it in the first place. As this trend took hold and then began to strangle the mainstream of music, there were plenty of rappers willing to lay down their hungry hearts in order to feed their equally hungry stomachs.
Of course, like all snakes, the cycle began to eat itself. Inner city rappers began to abandon all sense of conscience, canonizing names like Tupac and Jay-Z, A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy, without ever tackling the questions that those artists raised. And suddenly, rappers coming up in the ghetto had to answer a question: do you go with what sells, or do you go with what's soul?
Lupe Fiasco is one who chose soul. Born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco in Chicago, Lupe began making mixtapes when he was fifteen, releasing them on the internet and garnering so much acclaim that Jay-Z offered him a record deal. Opting instead to create his own label under the Atlantic Records umbrella, Lupe released Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor in 2006 to deafening acclaim. Explaining the title, Lupe mentions that Chicago's neighborhoods are dotted with Food and Liquor stores, each of which acts as a central gathering place for neighbors. The kids tasted their first bits of freedom; winos never made it off the sidewalk. "The 'Food' is the good part and the 'Liquor' is the bad part," Lupe says on his website. "I try to balance out both parts of me."
That same attempted balance is on display across The Cool, Lupe's 2008 release. A loose concept record, The Cool is the story of a boy whose father dies when he is a child, leaving him to fall in love with, alternately, The Cool, The Streets, and The Game. Though the three are physical characters across the album, they are clearly metaphorical takes on the idols that demonize most popular rap. Borrowing a concept from Dr. Cornel West, who will also be speaking at the Festival of Faith and Music, Lupe questions what has become standard-definition Cool in hip-hop. "Dumb it Down," perhaps Lupe's most direct attack, skewers the reception that Food and Liquor received on the streets as well as mimicking an imagined conversation between Lupe and an unnamed record executive who is attempting to give advice on subjects worthy of Lupe's study. While a chorus barks the title phrase, the executive and fellow rappers tell Lupe that he's giving people the wrong idea, that he's inspiring people to take themselves too seriously, that their newfound desire to go to college is a negative thing. "They're starting to think that smart is cool, Lu," the executive says. "Dumb it down!" shouts the chorus. It's not hard to imagine this conversation actually taking place in record company boardrooms on either coast. With an established image in place and so many rappers willing to sustain the status quo, not to mention the incredible profit margins that rap produces, record executives have a vested interest in keeping rap music dumb. When the guns clap on Lupe tracks, or when the ladies are implored to start dancing, more often than not they're all being undermined, stripped naked and exposed as money machines created by boring, unoriginal rappers. Don't let the message get drowned by the medium.
Faced with the same question that so many rappers before him were faced with, Lupe chose to remain true to hip-hop's unsold soul. In fact, one might argue that his patent refusal to dumb it down has set him apart from the pack, making him easier to like and – as the execs sign their checks – easier to market. Lupe has made wide waves in the world of hip-hop. Both Food & Liquor and The Cool charted highly on Billboard, and Lupe has been nominated for eight Grammy awards, taking home a statue at the 2008 awards for "Best Urban/Alternative Performance." Additionally, The USA Network honored Lupe with the 2009 Character Approved award, given by the television network to people who are positively changing the face of American culture.
Maybe it's a bit surprising that conscious rap music can do so well, both in the marketplace and on the streets. But maybe, if we squint our eyes against the bling, we can see this desire in the grooves of most rap records. After all, people have been crying out to be who they were created to be since the gates to the garden were closed. Maybe, just maybe, the success of Lupe Fiasco is indicative of something most rappers share, which is a desire to see hip-hop changed, brought back to its poetic, justice-driven roots. At it's best, and often despite itself, hip-hop and rap unite people and celebrate the diversity of life, from the North Suburbs to Cabrini Green. Maybe behind all of it, there's a desire to see the culture beat its guns into computers, to see the gangsta and the geek lie down together.Garner, Marty (2009). "Lupe Fiasco". Calvin University. Archived from the original on March 4, 2009.
== Date ==
Date	Date 	Time	City 	Venue
Fri 	April 3, 2009	9:30	Grand Rapids, MI	Van Noord Arena
== Transcript ==
In an historic first meeting, Cornel West interviews Lupe Fiasco at the Festival of Faith & Music 2009 at Calvin College.
Kenneth Heffner 	I am hoping you guys are excited about this as these two guys are about this. When we were putting this festival together and trying to figure out what kind of people and who we wanted to have at this, we had, I think, Dr. West secured. We were doing some research and finding out who's been talking to who, and who's been doing interviews, and we started finding a common thread between these two people. In terms of how they have each spoken about each other and have been influenced by each other's work. And then it occurred to us that they have never met. And so, we got a brainstorm in our committee and said we should change that and make something different happen. So I think you need to be aware this is a historic lecture. I think 'cause we'll be posting this lecture, and I think there are going to be people, bloggers, and other people talking about this in the next several weeks, because this is going to be a great conversation. And this is going to be a little bit like jazz and so it'll be improvisation. We're not quite sure how long it's going to go, I'm pretty sure it's going to go longer than it was planned. And also there will be a time for questions and answers. So we'll just let this go, and see how it happens. So ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Cornel West and for tonight, Dr. Lupe Fiasco.
Cornel West 	Oh, what a blessing to be here at Calvin College, I'm telling you. Just to be able to be on the stage with the most important hip hop artist of his generation! Lupe Fiasco. But I want to begin by acknowledging my dear brother Kenneth Heffner. Let's give him a hand, thank you so very much. Where is he? Where he go? Where did he go? And similar so for my dear sister, Jackie Rose. Where is she? Where is she? Oh yes, it's been wonderful, it's been wonderful. And we salute each and every one of you, both for your attendance here as well as the concert night. To see a real artist at work. I want to begin with a question for my brother, because I tell you I'm just so excited. I'm ready to rhetorically break dance right in front of you.
Lupe Fiasco 	Let me, the tone for me is this is monumental. Just… just being… this is monumental for me, so if it's giddiness and some shyness and humility, like I'm humbled in the presence of this man. Like this is a dream come true for me, so.
Cornel West 	Wow, man, that's very beautiful, man. I'm the one humbled.
Lupe Fiasco 	Let's just lay that groundwork out. If I burst into laughter, or tears, or run off stage. Just, that's why.
Cornel West 	I'm the one humbled, let me start off this way, then. The genius of Lupe Fiasco to the tradition that produced both of us. The 70th birthday, yesterday, Marvin Gaye. There is no Cornel West or Lupe Fiasco without Marvin Gaye, in terms of the depth of a tradition. John Hope Franklin just died this last week. There is no Cornel West, Lupe Fiasco, without a John Hope Franklin, that's part of that tradition. And of course 41 years ago, tomorrow, our dear brother. When I say our dear brother, I'm talking about every color in this room: Martin Luther King Jr. Shot down like a dog, Lorraine Motel, room 306 on that balcony. So that we're part of a tradition.
As younger generation, I'm Motownphilly, Sound Stacks, Aretha Franklin, The Stylistics generation. The younger generation, part of the same tradition but of course at the same time, that tradition at its height produced geniuses who become rocks. And the new ones are foam building on the rocks, but you have to be involved in finding your voice. And my question for my dear brother is how would he characterize, especially this reformed notion. We here at Calvin College now. Oh yeah, we haven't forgot about that. This reformed notion of a calling of a baroof of a vocation. Your calling as an artist, when did that first hit you, and how do you understand that calling?
Lupe Fiasco 	When I was… probably… hm. Probably 10, 10 years old?
Cornel West 	It was that early? Fascinating.
Lupe Fiasco 	My background is my mother was a intellectual and a gourmet chef, and my father was a Renaissance man. He was a martial artist, he was an engineer, he was a philosopher, a musician. Wore many coats, and I was always involved in music. Our household, there was sitars and xylophones, and guitars and keyboards, and a massive record collection and a massive collection of just odds and ends and things. And also a lot of social kind of social ideology and material and artifacts and things of that nature that were in the house and cultural influences from all over the world. Political influences from all over the world, he was part of the Black Panther Movement. Part of just the life movement, the do better for yourself movement in every level, in every capacity. That mixture was like, okay, now what you going to do? What are you going to, how is this affecting you, what are you going to produce from this upbringing, from from all these things? And words came out. And those words reflected, initially they were baby steps of just learning how to use 'em and what was around. My initial music experience was literally gibberish, it was just making words rhyme, learning how to put words together in the form of raps and in hip hop and things of that nature. And eventually when I got old enough to understand the things that I was taught and the things that I was shown, all those political cultural geopolitics and spiritual what have yous. Once I got old enough to understand it, I put that with my skills as an MC and I started to articulate those things. So between 11, another kind of renaissance around 15, then another renaissance around 18, then there was probably another kind of hard-hitting that took place around 22. And now they're like everyday.
Cornel West 	Wow, wow. That's rich, that's rich.
Lupe Fiasco 	And it became a vocation when I started to get paid. That's when it was like, "oh, yeah."
Cornel West 	That's that dialectical tension between vocation and profession.
Lupe Fiasco 	Oh, okay.
Cornel West 	Yes, indeed. Now we know we know there's no there's no vocation without invocation, just like there's no calling without recalling. And we know that the anthem of a blues people is lift every voice, not echo. So you how do you become courageous enough to lift your voice, so you're not just imitating with an echo? You have a voice, early on you got a voice, that's a hard thing. Took Coltrane a little while to get his voice he was imitating Johnny Hodges, Duke Ellington band for a long time. 'Til [?] said "Coltrane, when you going say what you got to say?" And we see that in everything, in hip hop, see in jazz, rhythm blues, and so forth. So that in your wrestling with your vocation, invocation means trying to be in conversation with the voices of the past and the present who help you find your voice. Who would be some of those voices? Voices dead and voices contemporary with you.
Lupe Fiasco 	Jay-Z was a. Jay-Z, Ghostface, and Nas for the actual mimic what they do. I want to be as good as them in content, and delivery, and style, and swagger. But then it flip flops and it becomes… this vast, let me pick a few good ones. Few good ones out the hat. It's… it's you.
Cornel West 	You going pretty deep in the barrel there.
Lupe Fiasco 	It's James Baldwin.
Cornel West 	Oh, yes, now I can understand that.
Lupe Fiasco 	It's Hunter S. Thompson.
Cornel West 	Oh, yes.
Lupe Fiasco 	Yeah, Hunter S. Without the drugs. It's characters from movies, it's so many influences and there's so many people that just come in and out. Tt could be a homeless man on the corner and we don't even have a conversation, I'm just noticing his life, and his movements, and my mind starts to go through the cycles of playing out his life. Or playing out the steps that got him to where he is. And his decisions and then the world's decisions, the people above him and the decisions they made that got him to that place. And that speaks to me, and that's an influence and I become his voice. Then I look and I see the the bus driver and the decisions she made, and everything, and I become her voice. Going back to like my song, specifically, the skateboarder kid, the Black skateboarder kid ostracized. I take his voice, and I start to come up with just like it's Humanity. And it's all forms of humanity, it's the hated, the oppressed, it's the elite, it's the middle class, it's the upper class, it's the lower class, it's the no class and it just became like those are my inspirations, those are my voices, channeled through Nas, and Jay-Z, and Ghostface. And this is how you say it, but this is what you say. It became less about me, I started to notice that my voice went away and it blended in, it harmonized with everybody else's voice and I started to see that like, it's the same thing you know. There's idiosyncrasies and little things hither to that, separate, make different, but the main things, the main motivations and the main drives are the same. And when I had that, that epiphany moment, that was the Renaissance that took place when I was like 22, 21, 22. And I was like wow. It's everyone, it's people on both sides of the fence. It's maybe harsh and it's the compassion and the ones with no compassion. I can understand and articulate both of their struggles, because they both have struggles and where it came from and what I figured out was a lot of times, it didn't come from them. It came from, they went through the same process that I went through. They reached a point where they lost their voice and they started to speak for a mass, or speak for a ideology that was around them as opposed to something that was coming from them. So, a lot of times I don't even really take credit for what I do, because I'm like well, it came from me for the sake of you know, physically, yeah, I spoke it. But where it actually came from, it came from, you know.
Cornel West 	You feel like a kind of vehicle through which something is working, but you don't want to downplay your own individual creativity though, no doubt about that. Because I think you connect vocation and voice to vision of somewhere. Of course, we read where there is no vision, the people perish. The difference between a vision and a stare, I could conceive with certain forms of music, certain forms of hip hop, where you get stares that are not empowering. They might stimulate your body, but they don't stir your soul. So they're not enabling and enhancing they just titillating. That's a stare. Vision, in the biblical sense, enabling. Empowering. But that lifting voice, James Weldon Johnson. Courage, compassion, and vocation, the calling. And then the vision that you just laid out, a magnificent international, global, and cosmopolitan vision. I think this is very important, all the young brothers and sisters here of all colors and the students here. Nothing human is alien to this brother. Nothing human. Different cultures, classes, civilizations, and so on. But when you think, even though you're so very young, especially compared to me. Chronologically I'm speaking, we're not talking spiritually now, just chronologically. But the fusion of those three: vocation and voice and vision, how would you want to see your legacy understood? Even though you still in some ways are…
Lupe Fiasco 	Legacy is a strong word.
Cornel West 	It is, it is.
Lupe Fiasco 	And it comes with. I live for the moment, a lot of times. Whereas I understand that the only thing constant in the world is change. So I could change tomorrow, 'cause I succumb to what I want but I also succumb to what they want and what they put in process. And so I'm affected by both of those. So with that, I always know that I'm capable of changing. On one hand, if I change for the worst, I don't want to be remembered. If I change for the better, I just want to be remembered as 'He did not lead them astray.' Not the multi-Grammys and his songs, his accolades and what he's achieved on paper. It's 'He did not lead them astray.' That's my fear, to lead astray, to create the cycle, the butterfly effect of me being the role model, the example of you doing wrong. I always say that if I tell a lie on my records, and I sell a million records, I've told a million lies.
Cornel West 	Wow, wow.
Lupe Fiasco 	You know, and then those—
Cornel West 	That's deep, that's deep, that's deep.
Lupe Fiasco 	Those million people that bought that record—Possibly the one fan who bought 25, which happened. But those people ingested that, they internalized it. They saw it, they heard it, it affected them. That four seconds, which was the length of that lie, which they could have filled with four seconds of the truth. That four seconds is going to affect me. That four seconds speaks volumes way beyond the rest of the good. For me, that four seconds outweighs the 60 minutes. So, for me, it's. I want to be remembered as he did not lead them astray, and if he led them astray, I don't want to be remembered at all.
Cornel West 	I'm just kind of silent on that for a bit though, brother. That's powerful. I mean the wonderful thing is Food & Liquor and The Cool, you already leading folks in the good direction. But the same time, I hadn't thought of not wanting to be remembered at all. So when you take your calling so seriously, that if you really don't follow through in the quest for the truth, you'd rather it just be eliminated and eradicated.
Lupe Fiasco 	My father's last words via my sister to me, were: Tell the truth. Tell Wasalu—that's my real name—tell Wasalu to tell the truth. And that congealed, everything that was loose in my life, it became concrete and became solid with that, with his dying words. And so it's like okay. Taking that on means that I take everything that comes with it. There's this truth and telling the truth you take. That's a battle, that's a war that you just waged against the seen and the unseen. And there's an army of lies, there's an army of untruth on the other side of the battlefield. And when you take up arms of the truth, that's a real serious thing. It's nothing whimsical about that. And the truth affects, the truth hurts. The truth destroys, it may destroy the facade. But people love the façade, deeply.
Cornel West 	That's true.
Lupe Fiasco 	And when you come with the sledgehammer of truth to start knocking down the statues and pushing down the the cities and stuff like that, you create enemies. You open yourself up to a whole gambit of enemies, the enemies with the friendly faces. The enemies who on the surface, you know that they're enemies, and you also start to bring out the enemy in yourself. You start to do battle with yourself, the first battlefield is here and here. And it's a very powerful thing, that 15 minutes before you go to sleep and you start recollecting on the day, becomes a very powerful place in life. So the drasticness—is that a word? Drasticness.
Cornel West 	It is now, brother.
Lupe Fiasco 	Of the statement of not being remembered at all, if I've led them astray. To me, that's part of it, that's part of the decision that I made, and I accept that.
Cornel West 	It seems to me that there is a difference you. Tell me what you think between a philosophical conception of truth that just wants to make some accurate claims about the world. And then there's an artistic conception of truth, let say go back Shakespeare's Hamlet "to thine own self be true, and this night follows day that can be false to no one." So that as an artist if you're going to be true to yourself, wrestling with that Civil War inside of your soul. All of us have things inside of us that if we're true to that could be expressed which could be misconstrued, misunderstood. Think of Marin Gaye, for example. What's going on, oh yes, he got some deep truth there. But let's get it on. He's got some deep truth there. I want you troubled man we can go on and on, you see what I mean? Because Marvin's being true to himself and when he looks at himself, he sees a lot of what is inside of all of us. What Samuel Beckett call mess. Being in time and space and the death sentence in time and space no one gets out of time and space alive with our mess. Now being true to our mess you got a mess, I got a mess. Mine's longer deeper, but I got a mess. Now being true to that mess, couldn't you still end up unintentionally maybe, misleading, but you're telling these folk I'm being true to me, I don't want you to imitate me. I'm being true to myself, and by being true to myself, I'm displaying some of my mess and hope that you will sidestep it. But one can view it in such a way that they might mislead—you see the point I'm trying to what, does that make sense? What do you think?
Lupe Fiasco 	Yeah, my conception, my reaction to that is the concept of self, the makeup of self. The initial self is very simple. Simplicity achieved, which is nothingness, so to speak. When you were first born you came out with teeth with no teeth, some people with teeth, hair, no hair. It came out simple you know there was basics, the most primitive of urges of hunger and affection. And as you grow to become yourself, you are taught by others. You take on concepts from others from outside from without the things that you hold within are very basic. You have the capacities of mind to process things, but when you process them based on it could be a moral code, or lack of a moral code. When you process it, you always process it against something that you've learned from someone else. And you start to see that the concept of self is, to me, is a corrupted concept. And that's not a statement of going against it or becoming an adversary to it. It's moreso just making the statement like yeah, you know, self is a corrupted situation.
There's nothing pure about self, especially in society. If we were all floating in bubbles in space. But we're not, we're walking, talking, human beings within cities and and rural areas or whatever that come this that were brought up in schools and universities and we're taught ideologies and concepts and television and marketing and advertising and radio and all these forces building you up. So there are certain aspects and certain messages that were that given to you, that were implanted in you, which carried corruptness, which carried senses which come out into the world as materialism. Which come out into the world as just inhumanity. That come from places of want and lack of compassion and things of that nature which were based on very sound economic principles, which is based on marketing and advertising. A lot of the stuff that we take in is advertising to buy a product. So what is the makeup of that of that knowledge, of that message, that was put into you? Was that message meant to empower you? Was that message meant to build you up, was it to give you some type of great outside about the world, and great insight of yourself? Or was it really meant for you to buy a product? So you have to check in your mind, everything that is in your head, which I think is part of going out into the desert for 40 days. You have to check your mind and your soul to see what the garbage is. To see what the mess is, 'cause that mess is if you speak for the sake of speaking and for the sake of the now, as opposed to sitting back and thinking about what you're going to say. If you just speak for the now, I'm going to entertain now, I have to entertain right now, you're going to get a lot of mess. Even with I want to tell a good story, I want to tell a positive message, your message is so intertwined with the mess and you didn't separate it good enough, you didn't dilute it enough. You didn't you spent 39 days instead of the the 40. You're going to get that, you're going to get the misconception and you're going to get the corrupted message. But then, there's also you're telling it to someone. It's not just to you.
Cornel West 	That's right.
Lupe Fiasco 	So you're telling it to other corrupted individuals with the mess inside of them, and they're taking your message in the midst of taking all the other messages. You can come on stage or you can video and they won't hear what you're saying. hey possibly couldn't understand what you're saying. They don't know the meaning of your words. Specifically if you go to Japan, they don't know what I'm saying. They can repeat it but they don't know it, they don't understand it. So they look at what I have on, and that's the message that they take. It's like well he looked cool, or he had on this, and that's what they take away from the show. And him jumping around on stage, and the beats like the beat was nice. So it's various levels of interaction, and how people actually take it, and how people misconceive it. You can have a a audience of just the most articulate, most smart individuals. And there could still be some misconception because there's schools of thought that take place from extreme code, extreme moral code. It's not just one solid moral code that people follow. So it comes from like different places. What you might think is positive gets thrown up against a wall of people who think that it's not positive. So it's all part of the mess of the world. I think what we have, is we have the world is a mess, and we're products of the world. The world is not a product of us, so we take on the mess of the world. We take on the chaos that built the world and the chaos that built the universe and that's just to me it. I'm smiling, because it just shows it's more proof for me that there is a God. That when I look up and I see the chaos of the sky, at night, I feel this when I think. I'm like I'm chaotic, too, so we got the same hey, I know man didn't create that, you know.
Cornel West 	No, I think for me one of the reasons why your art is so crucial at this moment. Why the significance of what you're doing, is that there's a deep spirituality there. I think if I were there with the Japanese brothers and sisters in Tokyo, and they were to see you perform just like we will tonight, that even if they didn't understand the English words, they would discern a spirituality at work through the words, through the music, through the body movement and the way you stylize space and time. With your corporality, with your body. What is it about that spirituality? Because we're in a moment now, these are catastrophic times. There's been so much hypocrisy, mendacity, social misery. So when somebody comes along with the kind of profundity, with the kind of honesty, and the kind of willingness to quest for the truth that we see in your work, it does surface and so in that sense there's certain historical conditions and circumstances I think that allow for you to surface in this way. Now we could link that to Providence general, or special and get theological about it, but we'll hold off on that. But I do believe something is at work in that regard. See it in Curtis Mayfield, in the 60's and 70's. See it in the last poet. See it in Gil-Scott Heron you know what I mean? And I know we in Grand Rapids and this is the city of the barge right oh those are some serious folk. Lord, Lord, those some serious folk for now the bar is not Curtis, he know that but oh, he's is a serious artist. But the challenge here is trying to tease out that spirituality and I guess the last question before we open it up for questions from the audience is how would you characterize your spirituality? Where does it come from?
Lupe Fiasco 	Well, I was born Muslim. But I would find myself in Baptist churches at like five years old.
Cornel West 	That's a good place to be now. But I love my Muslim brothers and sisters, I want that to be known, no doubt about it.
Lupe Fiasco 	A part of my father's library was things like the the Bushidō code and Taoism and Buddhism and pieces of Judaica and Star Wars. All these artifacts and things that came from, that were created for religious purposes and what have you. From that, I started to see a lot of similarities. I started to see similarities in the way that Muslims pray and the way that Buddhists pray. I started to see like Buddhist prostrate too? And then way before, Islam is way before Christian, way before. Whoa. And I started to really look at, as I had my renaissance and my epiphany moments and my growing up moments and stuff like that, I would go back and read religious scripture with a different want, with a different set of eyes. With a smarter set of eyes, with a more understanding, and I would I would see that there was a chain of since Adam. There was religions that had came and went, but they're all based from the same place you know and all based on the same ideologies and the same rules in a lot of aspects. But there would just be variations from here and there. Little small, tiny things, little technicalities that okay you can do this now y'all messed that up can't do that no more do this now you know remember you did that before? Y'all was cool so I'm going let y'all do that again. But the message stayed the same. The message of compassion stayed the same, the messages of shunning materialism. Those things started to strike a chord with me more than anything. I was always comfortable with it as a God and as one God and understood you know that there's sins and that there's retribution and there's karma. Which is a concept from Buddhism that people still in any religion secular, no religion, that still believe in I do bad, is going to come back to me. All of that stuff started to come together for me, and it was just like: well there's something going on here. There's something afoot amidst all these different religions and all these different spirits. There's some truth in this, that's punching holes through all of the dogma. All of the technicality, all of the ritual, all of the the cultural tradition. Not the religious tradition, the cultural tradition, and I started to see like: I don't agree with that. I don't agree with, just to be piercing, I don't agree with slavery. Arabs were one of the main pushers of slavery. And then Muslim. I was like, whoa. You mean the reason I'm here, and the reason I'm facing this, and the reason that the cemeteries and the social injustice and the brainwashing and all of this came from the religion that I was born into? Those were the people behind the scenes? And I started to make my separations from culture and religion and then from. I started to even separate religion from spirituality. And I started to see the contaminants that were put in from man and I started to bake and filter that stuff off and brush it off and I started to. I used to be scared, or thought that I would do something wrong, if I even picked up a book that wasn't an Islamic text. Like I was just doing some sin of some sorts and it was mirrored by my friends who were Christian and Hindu. I was like, if I participate even by touching it, I'm doing. I was like where did that come from? What institutions put that into effect or made that law that you should have a fear of even investigating another religion? Where did that, that don't make no sense so I started to all I started to get pushed aside for me. And I just started to really go off what I felt. Not what I thought', what I felt. And it's like the the four noble truths of Buddhism speak loudly to me, just as much as surahs from the Quran. Just as much as psalms from the Old Testament. Like they speak just as loud because they carry that same pure message the message that man could not create, because man is not pure. So those things that come down, and I was like yo, compassion and just compassion alone. That was enough love and it may be trippy and hippie and. But it's real.
Cornel West 	I tell you it sounds like John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme." It is looking at all of these traditions of humankind trying to make vertical connection to a deity and horizontal connection to other persons. All of them with crooked hearts trying to love their crooked neighbors. But it's also being open to one's own roots, because Coltrane had r-o-o-t-s, the roots he come out of the Black Methodist, Zion but then he's got routes r-o-u-t-e-s and there's a dialectical interplay between the roots and the routes you need the roots of springboard but you got to be able to be embracing to learn from all the different traditions. And yet for you, like Coltrane, love, compassion, empathy, other regarding activity is at the center of it all. That's rich. I want to add a footnote though that we Christians made major contribution to slavery. He mentioned there, brother he's very kind. Mentioned the Muslims, we Christians did have a small slice of Jewish brothers and sisters, too. So it was a pretty religiously promiscuous activity.
Lupe Fiasco 	There's a equal opportunity.
Cornel West 	A equal opportunity, that's right, call greed, greed, greed, just like the last 15 years. But we won't get into that, let's open it up for questions. Let's open it up for questions and queries though. Lord, is that Brother David? Is that Brother David from Princeton? What a blessing to see you man, we were in graduate school together.
Lupe Fiasco 	Oh wow.
Cornel West 	Good God almighty.
[Unidentified Person]	—Make some to yourself or you can just you know just sort of settle into the woodwork like other people do. Welcome back, good to have you here. I'd like to ask both you Cornel and Lupe, say something about how is hip hop. It's clearly African-American, it's American. How is it African? What are the African dimensions in the hip hop phenomenon?
Lupe Fiasco 	Woo.
Cornel West 	That's good question that's another philosophy, it's a deep question.
Lupe Fiasco 	Africa's the cradle, you know, of life. Wipe away any modern definitions of Africa. Any thing's going on, the things that go on in Africa. My struggle is alive and well in my heart today, because I came from Africa. It all comes back to well, what is your main thing? It's like yeah, my ancestors were enslaved. But you ripped them from Africa. They came from everything, started there, the day that like you know what you coming with us. The day that that happened back in 1490, whatever. I'm talking about my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather. When that happened, it sparked what I do today. That direct kind of like line of motivation from that. So I'm not even gonna get into the music and the more just kind of like surface things about it you know djembes on the songs or the dancing and stuff like that. Because everything changes, more of it comes from soul music, which comes from the blues, which comes from you know and we get into that kind of lineage. For me, it's more about what I talk about in particular and what happened because of slavery to create those situations in that created the 'hood. Not the neighborhoods, the 'hood. That facilitated the ignorance, that facilitated the oppression, the root of that came from, took us from Africa. that's when you police brutality, okay, that's get that out the way. Crack cocaine get out of Rockefeller Drug Laws, push all that out and when you start to push back through time, you get back to the shores of what, Western Africa? And that for me, that is just oh man, that affects my music in so many ways. It's the reason I do music.
Cornel West 	I would say that hip hop can be characterized as African culture post-modernized. And what I mean by that, is holy rhythmic. [?] of the drum. [?] drum solo in all of European modern music. You have a drum centered music, it's richest, the drum is not central, Africa is. It is also antifinem. and response. No spectators, so when you hear this brother tonight you don't come just to hear Lupe Fiasco, you come to help Lupe Fiasco be Lupe Fiasco as the artist, 'cause it's going to be call and response, it's going to be antifonal, you got to be in it together. He don't want spectators. No, no, you got to be into it. Like that Baptist church you spent a little time in. Antifonal just like our dialogue is African. It's antifonim, we help each other in terms of recognizing we in the mess together. Like all of us, and we all trying to help each other out.
But the last thing, is of course, by postmodern. There's polyvocal but it's under New World circumstances and what makes it U.S. and New World, for me, it is a continuation of the blues tradition. Because when I see my dear brother, I do see Muddy Waters in him. I see Skip James in him. I see sun housee in him, I see Robert Johnson in him. I see Bessie Smith in him, you see. Why? Because those characteristics in the music are produced and created by a peoples who have been dealing with catastrophic circumstances. The blues of his autobiographical Chronicle of a personal catastrophe expressed lyrically, so that it is the expression of a peoples with those characteristics under slavery, under Jim Crow, under James Crow, under 'hood conditions. Schools education levels of unemployment underemployment. There comes hip hop, Bronx, Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Herc, uh-oh KRS-One. Oh Lord, there go Rakim, on and on and on. Lyrically, artistically, musically expressing with those characteristics under catastrophic circumstances or mindful of them. Chuck D's lower middle class, highly mindful of the catastrophic circumstances but different than Afrika Bambaataa. He's out in Roosevelt, he's out in Long Island, but he's connected to it. Same way with Lupe Fiasco, you see, he's free enough to be himself, connected to the catastrophic circumstances. African in the postmodern form. That two answers to the question?
[Unidentified Person]	First of all, I want to thank you for allowing me to ask this question. I've been anticipating this moment for the last two and a half years. I'm actually from Hamlet North Carolina home of John Coltrane and I tried to get in contact with Professor West to tell him I was coming to Calvin because I'm trying to become what he is, an African-American Christian Theologian and cultural critic. But I have a question about the genius of hip hop. I actually come from a jazz tradition, actually I'm Church of God in Christ, who listens to jazz. But I come from a jazz tradition, and I like Jimmy Smith and Coltrane. I'm trying to understand what makes hip hop a genius, in the sense of what you talk about and keeping faith about the genius of Black artistic culture. I'm trying to understand it from my generation, the generation that listen to you know, Art Blakey and that kind of thing.
Lupe Fiasco 	I listen to Max Roach and I listen to Miles Davis.
Cornel West 	Oh yes, oh yes.
Lupe Fiasco 	My first foray into music, music alone, was because of Benny Goodman and the clarinet. I wanted to play the clarinet like Benny Goodman. My influences is jazz, the syncopation, the changes, the rhythm the how one part of the song doesn't sound like there's no repetition in the song everything's completely different. Robert Glasper is like my favorite song song in the world right now has a song called either "G&B" or "FTB" is my favorite song in the world right now. Even though I can't really remember the name. There is a level, of course, because it's the spoken word of it. There's a level of high intelligence in the music, the same way there's a level of high intelligence in jazz. The same approach to the minuscule, the micro, the note for note and how those notes interact and then layering that upon other notes from other sounds, other instruments, other things, and then making that speak to a time in society.
Jazz from the 30's doesn't sound like jazz from the 60's. And they had to start creating different genres within jazz. There's there b-bop, big band, and Avant guard. So there there's a certain you can see how the—I'm speaking just on instrumentation. How there's a change in it that reflects a change in society, that affects a change in culture, and you can see it. Same thing in hip hop, why is that? Why is there certain eras of hip hop? Why is there a certain level of going back to the amount of thought that is put into the music. It's taking this sample from this record from just two seconds and taking that two second from a jazz record. Taking two seconds of that jazz record, and expanding it into just this lush soundscape that informs and that also moves you and that also it entertains. Just with two seconds. So for me, it's like wow, you can do that with just two seconds? But then you put that over anything because you can do that with opera. You take this opera sample and then you could take this coda drum sample from Japan, or you could take this anywhere you give a hip hop producer, any form of music from anywhere he's going to understand it, he's going to break it apart, and he's going to re-synthesize it into something that's new. Something that's going to inform you, something that's going to expand, what you do. And that genius isn't just a genius, that's in hip hop, it's in music. That's the genius of music in any form. To me the closest relative to hip hop, for me, is punk. Punk music, it comes from oppression, it's a product of oppression. It's a product of not having a lot. Like we had turntables, they had guitars. The messages in it, the the musicality of it, to me those are like closer relatives than I would say jazz is to to hip hop. With jazz I got to make much more, I got to go leaps and bounds to try and make the connection. But with just with punk music alone, like just to see where it comes from and see where emanates and the the amount of time put into the music which. People kind of go against hip hop and say well you know you guys just take it's not you're not playing the music you know and I always put punk in that face. Well, like look at punk you know. Society doesn't agree with it, some people don't agree with it, we have some of the same enemies. We talk about some of the same things, we come from ghettos. We come from the same places, we deal with drugs, we deal with sexuality, we deal with all these different things. Now what about that, if it's just on the surface? And then it starts to go to somewhere else. Once we establish that, once we relate it to a music that you actually respect, then we start to go into other realms. Who's doing it as opposed to what it is. I'm sorry, I strayed a little bit but.
Cornel West 	No, but the point you were making, I want to build on in terms of genius because if we begin with the geniuses we can all agree upon. We all agree Ludwig van Beethoven is a genius, so was Mozart, so was Brahms. I think Stephen Sondheim is a genius, when it comes musical theater. Stevie Wonder is a genius. Now what is it about all of them? The master of craft, unbelievable critical intelligence, and combative imaginations that push the boundaries. So the problem is going to be, if you're trying to convince somebody that Beethoven was a genius, and you have no cultivated appreciation whatsoever that goes into making a judgment as to whether Opus 131, the greatest string quartet had ever written, is an act of genius because you can't appreciate it. You haven't been taught how to appreciate it, the nuances, the subtleties, what went into the making of the composing of the music versus the quartets of hiding and others. Hip hop's the same way, where did my brother go? There he is, in the back, yeah. I like to be able to see you. Hip hop's the same way, the lyrical genius of Jay-Z, the lyrical genius of Rakim, the lyrical genius of this brother. You have to have a cultivation of the nuances and subtleties that go into the mastery of the craft. Which means you have to have some idea the history of the craft, the emergence of the craft. You see what was going on in '79, what has happened in '82, '84, Scarface. We go on, and on, and on then how do you detect the critical intelligence at work in it? Not just the word smithery, which is crucial. But more than that. Wittgenstein thought that Shakespeare was not a great artist because he was just a wordsmith. He couldn't feel Shakespeare's spirituality. Wittgenstein, you're a philosophic genius, you're wrong. Shakespeare is a genius, you just not prepared, you're not cultivated enough to see the genius of Shakespeare. Isn't that something if Wittgenstein couldn't see it, then we all shouldn't feel too bad.
So when it come to hip hop geniuses, we have to make sure we are cultivated enough understanding the master the craft, able to detect the critical intelligence, and then see the combat of imagination of pushing it in so many different directions. Now there's something going on in Chicago with Lupe and Kanye West and Common and Rhymefest and Malik Yusef and [?] what is going on in Chicago, I don't know, we won't get into that. But that's interesting in terms of so much intelligence, imagination right now, in that particular genre. We won't say a word about Obama coming out of Chicago, but Chicago got something happening.
[Unidentified Person]	Okay, I need to wrap it up. So we're going to finish because we got to get people off to the next workshops. This question is going to be for Dr. Fiasco. We have a tradition of doing these conversations, almost all the artists who come here we did a great conversation with Kanan a few weeks ago. Our closing question always is this: There is this conversation that happens at a live performance, which doesn't happen in other ways. So it doesn't happen when the compact is, in which there is a relationship between the artist and audience. Something happens there, which we don't fully understand. And there is something the audience is supposed to bring because you're picking it up, I don't know quite how you're doing it, but you're able to sense something. What do we need to to do, as an audience, to help you? To make this a better communication? What's our job?
Lupe Fiasco 	Oh, wow.
[Unidentified Person]	We can't just come into this thing passively, it's not just entertainment. We've got a job to do, so what should we do?
Lupe Fiasco 	I don't know, man, I'm so self-critical. I always see the flaw in what I do. So I always be like, "it wasn't their fault, it was my fault." So honestly. But if you could, I'm not a demanding… I always feel like it's me, you know. But I think that's my part of my. There's some narcissistic selfishness in that, so I'll, in my therapy, I'll get rid of that and see. Start demanding things from the crowd, uh. If there's seats, like stand up. If there's like seats, I will put thumbtacks on the seats. If you don't know the words, act like you know the words. If you do know the words, say the words. Try and figure out when the beat is going to drop, and I always put the mic out there. That's unison time, like everybody at once say "ahh." 'Cause when it's silence, it just strikes to the core, it's such a painful shot. If I stage dive, catch me. That's the number one rule. If you run on stage, be cool. And don't fight the security when they throw you off. That's a part of running on stage, but just you know come, you know be there. If it's something that you don't like, let me know. I have no problem stopping the song if you don't like it. And go onto the next one, you you do it on you do it at home or in the car, like "I don't really like that song" just do this like… it's a democracy, so there has to be more people like than not. But if I could see a good enough amount of people, like we'll go to the next song. And that's all my demands.
[Unidentified Person]	Thank you.
Lupe Fiasco 	Cornel West, Cornel West, ladies and gentlemen. Cornel West.
Cornel West 	Lupe!
Lupe Fiasco 	I want to thank everybody for coming out, really appreciate it. I felt like I was in the audience with you guys, like this guy is such an influence and inspiration and empowering figure for me. I really appreciate you guys giving me the opportunity to sit across from him and actually dialogue with him. Thank you very much, 'preciate it.
== References ==
Category:2009 live performances
Category:Events