RedEye

RedEye was a publication created by Chicago Tribune, published every weekday since its inception until February 3, 2017. The final issue was published March 19, 2020, before it ceased operation during COVID-19. American rapper Lupe Fiasco was featured in several issues.
=== 2011 ===
You know what doesn't make jilted concertgoers feel better? Excuses like, "Well, I guess the language in the advertising wasn't clear."
Just ask anyone who paid to see Lupe Fiasco on Saturday at House of Blues.
Yes, the event was, technically billed as "Lupe Fiasco Record Release Party" not, explicitly, "Rest Assured: This Ts An Official Lupe Fiasco Concert." However, ads for the event prominently featured a photo of the chart-topping Chicago rapper, and the ticket prices ranged from S30 to $125. At that price, most Fiasco fans were going to assume that the record release party for "L.A.S.E.R.S." involved a legitimate performance from the man behind the recent No. 1 album on the Billboard 200.
T wasn't at Saturday's show, but T certainly can understand the frustration over what reportedly took place: Instead of a Lupe Fiasco concert, the event featured a DJ, a handful of rappers and then, eventually about 25 minutes of Fiasco (beginning around 1 a.m.), with some tracks delivered more as snippets than full songs.
In response to fan anger that should have been expected, Fiasco sent tweets Monday such as, "To be clear to everyone that attended the House of Blues Laser release thing in Chicago. It was NEVER supposed to be a show ..." and "The promoters didn't stress to the public the fact that it was supposed to just be a party."
Fine, I suppose that's true. But for a rapper who has built his image on his own social consciousness, Fiasco clearly had a brain fart in looking out for his fans here.
Most people probably don't expect a Grammy-winning star to go over every detail of every show on his schedule—Fiasco is successful enough to have people do that for him. Still, this was Fiasco's first major appearance in his hometown following the release of his biggest— and, sorry least effective—album, whose back story frill of conflict with Atlantic Records, only made people pay more attention.
If attendees know that Lupe Fiasco is on the bill, they expect a Lupe Fiasco show And that doesn't mean less than a half-hour of songs he apparently doesn't feel like finishing.
So who's to blame? Clearly Fiasco's camp as well as House of Blues, which should have known from the start that his "Record Release Party" would mislead people. (Worth noting: House of Blues/Live Nation did not produce the show itself. For the event, the venue was rented out to outside promoters, who did not respond to my requests for comment.)
Next time, I suppose, fans will be cautious if an event is billed as something other than a concert, such as "Lupe Fiasco Promotional Shindig" or "Kick/Push Singer On-Stage Hullabaloo."
A final word to the wise for Lupe: Nobody cares that you were driving six hours to make the show They care that you were expected to kill it on stage, and you barely showed up.Pais, Matt (March 30, 2011). "That's Why They Call Him Fiasco". RedEye. Archived from the original on April 12, 2017.
=== 2012 ===
Lupe Fiasco can come across as a teacher, preacher, cutup, conflicted citizen, jazz head, skilled rhyme machine and political radical.
His new album, "Food and Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Part II," touches on all those personas. Fiasco—born Wasalu Muhammed Jaco 30 years ago—was part of a wave of socially conscious Chicago rap artists on his 2006 debut album, "Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor." Since then, he has grown into a respected hip-hop veteran who has sold nearly 1.5 million copies of his first three albums while growing only more fearless in his outspokenness.
In the past, he has been critical of everyone from his record company to President Obama. This summer, he fretted over the rising murder rate in Chicago and how it was spilling over into the music of rising rap stars such as Chief Keef and Lil Reese. Keef in turn lashed out at Fiasco.
But it would be a mistake, Fiasco says, to interpret his new album as a critique of recent events. The subject is American in all its contradictions, but it's about looking deeper than Keef's recent music or the president's policy on the Middle East.
"The bulk of this album speaks to how America hasn't changed. The great turning points in history, we romanticize them too much. The general arc of the way society works hasn't changed in terms of racism, class bias, oppression, happiness, joy, displacement, urban decay and urban renewal for decades. There are certain things we have to address, but have not really addressed for decades, really—youth violence in the city, for one. The same cycle of violence keeps happening in Oakland, Detroit, Miami, Houston, Chicago."
Fiasco himself was a product of those violent streets, growing up on the West Side where gangbangers and drug dealers ruled. He dabbled in gangsta rap as a teen before realizing it was a dead-end creatively So when upstart Chicago rappers like Keef began chronicling street violence in their music, Fiasco told a radio interviewer this summer, "Chief Keef scares me. Not him specifically but just the culture that he represents." Keef responded with an epithet-laden message on Twitter.
"My first comments were to express concern about the incubators of violence," Fiasco says. "I was more distraught and concerned about what causes all this violence to happen in the first place. Many of my friends are gangsters. Some of my best friends in the music business are gangsta rappers. I'm not flinching at a gun in a video, or a song about selling crack. I talked about the same things in my older records. It's not like this is brand new. My concern, and what everyone's concern should be, is that the circumstances that create a culture like that haven't changed. There have been no real solutions. So why wouldn't you expect a new crop of music like this from all cities?
"The mimicking of the culture you see now, the style of the music, originated in Atlanta, imported from (Atlanta rappers such as) Waka Flocka and Gucci Mane. Where did that come from? Detroit, Oakland. It starts to go around the map. It's the same venting in the music, how it sounds, its attitude, the callousness and aggressiveness. Underneath, what's there? I'm afraid Chicago is becoming Detroit. I'm afraid Chicago is dying. There is some semblance that society is running as normal. But as soon as you go two blocks outside the downtown radius, it's a wasteland."
Fiasco says he feels driven to counter the nihilism that has cropped up in the new Chicago hip-hop: "You have people coming out of the city that carry the same DNA of progression, change and hope, which inspires musicians and poets to combat it, an opposing voice. It's always been like that in Chicago. My piece can be just as strong and aggressive [as the gangsta rap}, and I put that on the album."
On the new album, Fiasco hammers away at a range of heavy topics, including the perpetuation of stereotypes (the five-letter "b" word comes in for a complex, song-length exploration), the perpetuation of slavery and ecological desecration in the name of expansion ("Unforgivable Youth"), the mistreatment of Native Americas in South Dakota ('Around My Way (Freedom Ain't Free)") and CIA brainwashing ("Lamborghini Angels"). It's no wonder he's a fan of the late historian Howard Zinn, whose 1980 classic, 'A People's History of the United States," documented the toll paid by common people so that the political and economic elite could advance their agendas.
If that makes Fiasco seem like a scold, he's not apologizing. "I know you're sayin', 'Lupe rappin' 'bout the same [bleep}'/ Well, that's 'cause ain't {bleep} changed," he raps on "ITAL (Roses)."
"Howard Zinn had a sense of humor, and he realized the unpopularity and the futility of some of his views. But he never backed away from the importance of what he was saying. He was saying, 'I am preaching at you. I am a teacher. I have no shame in doing that.' Some of the people we hold in highest regard in this society, whatever our background, whatever our experience, are preachers."
That leaves less room for the warmth that defined Fiasco's breakthrough single, "Kick Push," but it returns on the closing track, "Hood Now." It's a celebration of how far African-American culture has come in recent decades, despite the obstacles still to be overcome.
"They gave us scraps, some of it old," Fiasco raps, "We cooked it up and called it 'soul.'"
"The fact that we've been able to capture and repurpose some of the things that were meant to destroy us, or keep us out of the mainstream, is worth reflecting on," he says. "That's something we need to preach about too.""Touch Love". RedEye. October 4, 2012. Archived from the original on April 14, 2017.
=== 2013 ===
The first lyric on last year's Lupe Fiasco album, "Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. II," reads as follows: "Now I can't pledge allegiance to your flag/'Cause I can't find no reconciliation with your past." He has said his next album, "Tetsuo & Youth," will be in a lighter, more pop style, de-emphasizing this kind of intense social commentary.
True?
"Nah," he says. "It's about smoking crack."
The Chicago-born rapper pauses a beat to wait for this deadpan joke to sink in. "There's literally a song on the album called 'Smoking Crack'—featuring Chris Brown," he clarifies. "If you take that to be a political statement, OK. That's for you."
"Political" is a bit of a dirty word lately for Fiasco, 31, whose given name is Wasalu Muhammed Jaco. Earlier this year, he had the audacity to criticize President Obama—in one freestyle rap, circulated widely online, he declared he didn't vote for him—during an inauguration performance. After months of resulting bad press, Fiasco spends the first few minutes of a phone interview from an L.A. tour stop railing against the idea that he's political.
"The majority of my music has nothing to do with politics. It has nothing to do with social commentary" he says. 'A lot of my music is fantasy-based—daydreaming, giant robots flying through the sky Interlaced in that is stories {of} where I come from, what I've seen as a child. Sometimes it's fantasy Sometimes it's the reality of being a black man in America growing up in dangerous neighborhoods."
Then, in his funny fast-paced way Fiasco contradicts himself by launching into a diatribe that can only be described as social commentary "When somebody says, 'Lupe's being political,' it's not a progressive or positive thing. It's always to kind of put me down, or wash out what I'm saying," he says. "If you're going to address violence in the city, you're going to have to deal with everything in the city—not just the Gold Coast and Wicker Park. I spoke this directly to the mayor's face—'if you really want to fix this city, you got to treat this city like it's the entire city.'"
Fiasco says "Tetsuo & Youth," due sometime in early 2014, is likely to be in the soft, sentimental vein of its first single, "Old School Love," which he released a month ago. But "Tetsuo," which he has said was partly inspired by the young motorcycle gang member in "Akira," a popular manga series in Japan, will be experimental and ambitious in Fiasco's try-everything way.
"You'll get a superstar, something that's nice and soft," he says. "Then you'll get the weight that's coming from this record and the next couple of singles—just a very hard, aggressive kind of record, stuff that's built and engineered for clubs, and the opposite of what 'Old School Love' will sound like.... Of course, you want to be played on the radio and have a nice pop record. But I want to challenge myself.""Lupe Fiasco Is a Rapper Filled with Contradictions". RedEye. November 22, 2013. Archived from the original on April 15, 2017.
=== 2016 ===
Entrepreneurs in two Chicago neighborhoods will get a shot at funding from a new organization founded by Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco and Google executive Di-Ann Eisnor.
Through their Neighborhood Start Fund, they're scouring communities overlooked by Silicon Valley investors to find ideas that could generate $100 million in revenue—and also as a way to encourage diversity among entrepreneurs and spur neighborhood development.
"From an innovation standpoint, we're missing out on great ideas and opportunities for problems to be solved," Eisnor said.
Englewood and Lawndale were part of the June expansion of the Neighborhood Start Fund, which identifies startups for investment in specific neighborhoods, and then reinvests profits into funds to fuel more startups from those communities.
Eisnor, head of growth for Google's Waze traffic and navigation app, and Chicago-native Fiasco will be presenting along with venture capitalists and startup professionals at an hour-long workshop on ideas and pitching Saturday, Aug. 13, at Englewood Accelerator (formerly EnglewoodBlue), 815 W. 63rd St., at 10 a.m. and in Lawndale at Firehouse Community Arts Center, 2111 S. Hamlin Ave., at 2 p.m.
Participants, through Sept. 2, can submit entries online to move to a pitch competition where $5,000 in funding is on the table to build a prototype. From there, the Neighborhood Start Fund could offer investments from $25,000 to $100,000.
The program also provides access to networks workshops and mentoring.
Ideas can range from the next indispensable gadget to a slamming mac-and-cheese recipe—as long as it has the potential to generate cash, organizers said.
"We're looking for very big good ideas. We want companies that can generate at least $100 million," Eisnor said, "We want to create a real change, and to do that, we need some super-successful companies."
She and Fiasco (whose real name is Wasalu Muhammad Jaco) met in 2014 as the Aspen Institute's Henry Crown fellows, young entrepreneurs charged with creating initiatives to better conditions in communities. They bonded over conversations about marginalized communities and opportunities in innovation.
They thought many good ideas were available but didn't get the chance for development, and partnered on the $1 million fund.
The fund began with the Brownsville neighborhood in New York in October before expanding to Chicago. They're also in New York's Jamaica neighborhood, Miami's Overtown/Wymwood/Allapattah community, South Central Los Angeles, Roxbury in Boston and Anacostia in Washington, D.C.
Half of the money in the fund makes from a successful venture goes back to the neighborhood-specific fund from which the startup sprang, they say.
The New York pitch competition of 10 finalists yielded three startups that got $5,000 funding. Two of those—a digital on-demand mental health services and resources connector and a marketplace for discovering and booking unsigned artists—each got an additional $25,000 investment and will accompany Eisnor on a trip to Silicon Valley to pitch to other investors.Jackson, Cheryl (2016). "Lupe Fiasco Seeks Startups from Englewood, Lawndale". RedEye. August 17, 2016. Archived from the original on April 22, 2017.
== Gallery ==
File:RedEye (November 3, 2008).jpg
File:RedEye (March 7, 2011).jpg
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File:RedEye (September 20, 2012).jpg
File:RedEye (October 4, 2012).jpg
== References ==
Category:2013 interviews
Category:Newspapers