AllHipHop

AllHipHop is a hip hop news website founded in 1998 by Greg Watkins and Chuck Creekmur. In 2006 and 2011, they did an interview with Lupe Fiasco.Watkins, Greg (February 10, 2006). "Lupe Fiasco: Revenge of the Hip-Hop Nerd". AllHipHop.Creekmur, Chuck (October 26, 2011). "Lupe Fiasco Talks the Occupy Movement". AllHipHop.Creekmur, Chuck (November 2, 2011). "Lupe Fiasco Talks "The Burden of the Outspoken Artist"". AllHipHop. Later in 2019, they did an interview with Chuck Anderson (who did the artwork for Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor),Kyles, Yohance (December 10, 2019). "A Conversation with Photographer Chuck Anderson on Shooting Lupe Fiasco's Iconic 'Food & Liquor' Album Cover". AllHipHop. and Ayesha Jaco, Fiasco's older sister who did the intros for Food & Liquor (2006), Lupe Fiasco's The Cool (2007), and Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1 (2012).Kyles, Yohance (December 27, 2019). "A Conversation with Ayesha Jaco on Providing the Poem for Lupe Fiasco's 'Food & Liquor' & Their Childhood in Chicago". AllHipHop.
== Critical reception ==
Album 	Year	
Food & Liquor II:The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1	2012	
Tetsuo & Youth 	2015	
== Listicles ==
Title 	Year	Result 	
"Top 20 Dopest Music Videos of 2011"	2011	#7 ("The Show Goes On")	
"AllHipHop's 20 Best Albums of 2015"	2015	(Tetsuo & Youth) 	
== Articles ==
=== 2006 ===
AllHipHop.com: What was your upbringing like?
Lupe Fiasco: I grew up in what's called the West Side of Chicago; grew up in like the hoody-hood with the prostitutes, and the drive-bys, and the cocaine, and the heroine, and all that. At the same time, my mother was like really cultured. [She was a] gourmet chef, she really into like Black culture and you know like doing really—having a really healthy household and all that stuff.
AllHipHop.com: So what were you like as a child?
Lupe Fiasco: [Lupe discusses the nerdier aspects of his persona] I was so cool because I was from the hood, you know what I'm saying? I could still relate to this person or that person you know, but like for the most part it was like I had like this nerdy kind of like appeal because of the stuff I was into too. I was into comic books and you know Japanese cartoons, and you know into classical music and reading, and different uncool stuff like that.
AllHipHop.com: What about hip-hop?
Lupe Fiasco: You know, at first, I didn't like hip-hop.
AllHipHop.com: Why not?
Lupe Fiasco: You know, it was vulgar. It was demeaning, but not all of it. My father introduced me to hip-hop through N.W.A. so that was my first experience. He would be driving down the street like banging N.W.A., and I would be like tucked in the seats like ashamed, you know what I'm saying? When I started discovering like Fu-Schnickens, it was all kind of fun, M.C. Hammer or something like that, you know what I'm saying?
AllHipHop.com: When did hip-hop really get serious for you?
Lupe Fiasco: Like during high school, I really got into hip-hop and really started liking it, and really started doing it, and the rest is history. I got my first record deal when I was in high school, and that was like in 2000. I was with Epic Records. I was with a group called Da Pack from Chicago,
AllHipHop.com: The first time I ever heard your name was regarding the "Conflict Diamond" thing. Somebody said that you had started that whole concept, and then Kanye swooped it from you. What happened with that?
Lupe Fiasco: Well, I don't really discuss the "Conflict Diamond" situation anymore, because people take what they want to take from it; you know what I'm saying? I actually did my radio show last night, and my co-host was like, "Yo he did [take] it, you know what I'm saying?" But it was like that was all over the world. Like, I would go to London and everybody [said], "Hey, 'Conflict Diamond' is over, how did you feel Kanye jacking your words?" You know and than it was people on the other side trying to play me and Kanye against each other.
AllHipHop.com: Right, I get it. But what really happened?
Lupe Fiasco: So what happened was, I did "Conflict Diamond" right after Kanye released the original version of ["Diamonds from Sierra Leone"], and [I] like sent it all over the world. Like, so I got connections in different countries and stuff like that, so when I do mixtapes, some stuff might even bang in the U.S. but it will be banging in Kazikstan, you know what I'm saying? I would just send it out and it was bubbling and popping and popping, and popping and Kanye heard it and me and Kanye went to do "Touch the Sky."
AllHipHop.com: Ok, go ahead.
Lupe Fiasco: So when we went to go do "Touch the Sky", Kanye was like, 'Yo, it's funny that you did "Conflict Diamond", because that's the theme to my video, you know what I'm saying? Like little kids getting their hands cut off, I just didn't talk about it in the record, but my whole video is about blood diamond you know?' So it's just two people thinking alike on the same subject, you know what I'm saying, and bringing it out.
AllHipHop.com: Oh okay, now you have your own company, 1st & 15th, which will release your Atlantic-distributed debut?
Lupe Fiasco: Yeah, I started 1st & 15th. The deal with Epic Records fell through with the group and one 1st & 15th together. So it was like I went straight from being like this you know one of the members in the group, quote/unquote to being you know like an owner of my own company, you know what I'm saying?
AllHipHop.com: Right.
Lupe Fiasco: So like that happened when I was 19, so I've had 1st & 15th now for about five, six years, being vice president.
AllHipHop.com: Okay, how does your Muslim faith factor into your music and how you approach music?
Lupe Fiasco: Well, I was born Muslim, so Islam plays a part in my everything I do, to a certain extent. I'm not like the poster boy for Islam you know what I'm saying? So it's like I still got my flaws and stuff like that, so I don't really wear that on my sleeve. [But] I'm really with some underlying consciousness, no matter what it is that I can talk about—cocaine, or I can talk about carrying guns. I've been literally carrying guns since I was five, like four or five years old, simply because my father was in the military and he wanted to teach us how to shoot. I've been shooting AK's since I was as baby, you know? I don't like to glorify ignorance or nothing like that, but I know you need to—you can talk about it in certain aspects. You'll still get the people who don't listen unless you're talking about nonsense. Catch their ear, and then at the same time, teach them something, you know? It [also] plays on the extra curricular stuff that happens about, about being like a rapper and being in the music business like going to—all right, I don't go to clubs, I don't drink, I don't smoke, you know like my whole—the whole groupie situation is shut down.
AllHipHop.com: You've adopted the nerd persona, but you're also in a position associated with popularity and fame. How do you balance the two?
Lupe Fiasco: Well, I think everybody is a nerd in a certain aspect. You'll be surprised who you'll walk with, smoking his weed, smoking his gun, toting this 20" rim, [is the same guy who has] the whole collection of Transformers at the crib. I don't wear that on my sleeve though.
AllHipHop.com: Moving on, I like what you're doing musically. What can we expect album wise?
Lupe Fiasco: Your album should be a whole performance, you know what I'm saying? It should be a whole movement to draw people in. I just tried to create a balance of good and bad, and that's where Food and Liquor comes from. Food is good. Liquor's always been bad—without being a Muslim. So I tried to create this balance of like really good you know happy stuff, you know what I'm saying? With this sharp reality, you know contrast to with it some real deep reality and real realness. I've been working on Food and Liquor for like five years, and it's really like my baby and masterpiece, and it's changed as I grew up with the album. When I first was working on Food and Liquor—at that point in time I had three chains and two Rolexes and driving this and running around in this, and you know I was hanging with them so it was really violent, you know what I'm saying? And really directed to my peer group, you know what I'm saying? I was aware at the time but this one's a little bit more general, it's going to be more universal, it's a little softer, you know? Almost grown up.
AllHipHop.com: Okay, who would you say your influences were?
Lupe Fiasco: You know I really tried to go back and recreate [Nas'] It Was Written, you know what I'm saying like that? [I would play] It Was Written and then I would play my album, and it was like, 'Do we got [this] record, do we got that record?'
AllHipHop.com: All right, what have you learned from Kanye West, if anything?
Lupe Fiasco: One thing I learned from Kanye, and what I think people don't focus on, they focus more on just the whole outwardness of him, you know what I'm saying? Like Kanye is really—when he gets creative—in the studio, performing, behind the camera, directing or co-directing, like he's really on his game. The way he goes at it and the way he attacks it, is crazy.
=== 2011 (I) ===
AllHipHop.com: So I wanted to know, just to get things moving, what are your thoughts on the whole "Occupy Wall Street" movement as it spreads across the world, really, at this point?
Lupe Fiasco: Overall, I think it's great. Being actually there from the beginning of it, and seeing it kind of mobilize into being something that was an idea or like a challenge, to see the people orchestrate it and to see it actually take place, then to see it kind of spread, and now seeing it become kind of more of a global kind of thing—I think overall, I think it's great. It's a great conversation, a great kind of place where people can go. I've been to like five of them in different cities, just checking up on them, just seeing what was needed from a support side, but at the same time, too, to take a temperature of exactly what was going on and to see.
I found myself in conversation circles where it'd be a socialist and a physics teacher and a guy who works pro bono—an immigrant lawyer who does pro bono work for immigrants, and then just a regular high school kid then a college guy who went to school and is currently unemployed and is looking for something to do. And with me, you've got some superstar rapper then you've got some dude from some union, all in a circle, discussing ideas and theories and thoughts. So I think it's great.
AllHipHop.com: Where do you see the movement going?
Lupe Fiasco: That's kind of been my thing, is going to different ones to get that on-the-ground kind of… doing some reconnaissance, I guess, and seeing exactly what the momentum was and what direction it was heading in and where it could, I guess, kind of make that same… for my own personal sake, to see exactly where this is going to go. I think it's going to be something that is an institution, in the sense that it becomes how we hold dear things such as the Constitution, you know? Or we hold dear things such as the Declaration of Independence, or we hold things dear such as the Civil Rights Movement.
We always have these kinds of eras or these philosophies or these events that we kind of hold dear to and always go back to as we start to try and plan our future, what we use as kind of a precedent to make our decisions upon. I think the Occupy movement is going to be that. It's going to be a precedent step, where normal people came out and voiced their opinion in a major way. Normal people came out and colluded and got together to discuss, openly, all their different ideas about the world. About themselves. The way society could be shaped. I think it's that #occupy—Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Denver, Occupy Chicago, Occupy the hood, what have you—that Occupy is going to become a precedent for…remember we were going to use that as the flag. This is a new flag, representing the new kind of era or a new generation. The youth of the generation to come is going to use this as a precedent to deal with the way they live their lives.
AllHipHop.com: Do you think that Hip-Hop as a movement could symbolically need and be occupied as a movement?
Lupe Fiasco: No. And I say that because Hip-Hop, I think that Hip-Hop needs to be investigated by the Occupy movement. In the sense where I say that the Occupy movement breaks down, and if you go there for a few hours and you get in a conversation with a few people, you'll see that it's people dissecting everything. Taking it, whether it be the economy, whether it be the Federal Reserve. When people get even more specific, the relationship between politicians and corporations—things as general as the government itself.
It's really, I think, Hip-Hop needs to be put into rotation and dissected, as far as 'what is Hip-Hop?' When we say "Occupy Hip-Hop," what does that mean? Because I don't think Hip-Hop is defined in the sense where, is it the commercial side? Is it the cultural side? Is it the media side? Is it the social media side? Is it the ills of Hip-Hop? Is it the positive sides of Hip-Hop? Is it the music, or is it the fashion? Is it the website? Is it the magazine? Is it MTV? Is it BET?
I think that's what Occupy is, an investigation of certain things. I don't think that Hip-Hop fits in that as far as… I think it's bigger than Hip-Hop. I don't think it's necessarily something that Hip-Hop can come in and kind of coerce, or it can promote it. Just like I think punk rock can promote it or country music can promote it, or any kind of structure that has and is a mass, or is connected to the masses, can definitely do something to promote it. But I don't think it's as simple as saying Hip-Hop needs to come in and do something about this, because Hip-Hop will come in and see that it's going to get ripped apart and put back together and criticized and thought about and really kind of put into the same kind of, I guess, the same kind of protocol they're putting Wall Street through, and they're putting Washington through. And they're putting all those forces that come to bear in this world that affect us and shape us and move us. All of that stuff is being rethought and re-dissected and redone. So if Hip-hop does play a part in it, it's to be changed. It's to open itself up to be changed, to be criticized, to be pulled apart, and put back together again.
=== 2011 (II) ===
AllHipHop.com: I wanted to ask you just briefly, just in sort of a hindsight manner. The press made a big deal of your metaphor for President Obama as a terrorist. Do you have any regrets on that now, or maybe a different point-of-view in hindsight?
Lupe: Not at all. Not at all. I made this point when I was on Bill O'Reilly. I said just because—and it stems from Howard Zinn. Howard Zinn said war is terror, right? Howard Zinn has a very deep past, a very powerful political thinker. He was a soldier, actually fought in World War II. He was a guy deeply involved in the Civil Rights movement in the South, [author of] "A People's History of the United States." A very powerful dude who I look up to very much so. His words, that war on terror, war and the definition of why we wage war is definitely terror. The people who wage war, what are they? There is no… redefining it for the sake of making yourself feel better when you go to sleep at night. When you bomb a village for no reason at all other than that it's a hindrance for rearranging some type of political structure or some type of energy structure in the world, or putting yourself in a better strategic position in a region so you can take over that region's resources? That's terror. That's not bringing freedom and liberty to people by eradicating an entire town and killing thousands and thousands of people, millions of people, and standing behind that. So that's terror. But saying that, it doesn't negate all of the other qualities or all of the other characteristics of that person. Like Bill O'Reilly, he's a father, he's a great speaker, he's a great thinker. He's a motivator. He's a charitable person. But all of that, in itself, also does not not make him a terrorist. You know? It does not.
AllHipHop.com: Echoing. I think we've got an echo all of a sudden. Hold on.
Lupe: Hello?
AllHipHop.com: Chelsea (publicist)?
Publicist: I'm on, I'm on. That echo is crazy. I think it stopped.
AllHipHop.com: Okay.
Lupe: Yeah, you figure out the right one?
Publicist: Chuck, are you on?
AllHipHop.com: Yeah, I'm here.
Male: Hold on. Alright you guys, everyone's back connected.
Lupe: Yeah, so as I was saying, all those good characteristics about him, at the same time too, don't negate all the negative characteristics about him. That's clear across humanity, when you critically think, that's what you do. You think critically.
AllHipHop.com: Right, right, okay. I'm sorry, go ahead.
Lupe: I'm sorry, I'm saying, I'm a proponent of critical thinking. You look at a situation from all points of view. You don't bring your bias into it. You become open to that same type of conversation. You're open to be educated, but at that same time you educate. You don't negate any facts. You don't create any fictions to push your own preconceptions of someone. You let someone act. I've met president Obama when he was still senator Obama playing basketball the night he was nominated to be president of the United States of America in Chicago, and I had this opportunity to be amongst him while he was doing that. And everybody was shaking his head. I specifically remember, as much as this moment means, I can't shake his hand. I don't know what he's like. Right? I don't know… I'll shake his hand once I see what he does.
AllHipHop.com: You said you don't know what he's what?
Lupe: I said I don't know what he's going to do, right? I don't know what he's going to do. Hello?
AllHipHop.com: Yeah.
Lupe: Hello, hello? I'm sorry. I didn't know what he was going to do, so I didn't want to be a hypocrite and shake his hand. And then it's like oh man, but you shook his—it was just something personal to me, I've got to see what this guy does. That same night he went on TV and was in Grant Park and did the whole thing, I was watching it, and he gave the speech. It was like okay, this is cool, aright. He said we need to get out of Iraq, and I'm like that's dope. Then he said we need to get in Afghanistan, which is "where the real war is." That's Barack Obama. I'm like nah. I don't agree with that. That's not where the real war is. What war are we fighting? So from that day… I'm glad I didn't shake his hand, because I don't agree with that. Not to say I don't agree with universal health care, I think that's fantastic. Let's repeal and redistribute and redo what we need to do to make sure there's a fairness within American society and try to limit some of these disparities, but your second act is you bail out all the banks. Your second biggest financial contributor is AIG.
AllHipHop.com: Right.
Lupe: But you're a great guy. You brought the Black professor and the White police officer to drink beer on the white house lawn. That's fantastic. The next day you're bombing some town.
=== 2011 (III) ===
AllHipHop.com: What burden do you bear? Being this outspoken, honestly, there's only a few artists that are this outspoken and really none on a "commercial level," meaning out of the underground. Do you bear any particular burden? As a person or as a human, or even as an artist?
Lupe: I just think it's a continuation of what I was meant to do as a child. I've always been somebody who's been around people who've been outspoken, whether it was my father who was very active on all fronts that had to deal with justice and freedom, the things of organizing and doing and on your own and speaking out against the evils in this world. And whether it kills you. So that's my lineage. That's where I come from. So whether I was a rapper or a teacher or a chef or whatever I was, I was always going to be speaking out against what I thought was wrong and what I could prove was wrong, and using what I have to help someone else. I just look at it as Occupy Wall Street, when it first started, they wanted people to come in and help galvanize and spread the message. I looked at my Twitter page and said hey, I've got 800,000 people. Maybe they can use 800,000 people. I'm not using that to bring myself up or become a leader of the movement. I just happened to have 800,000 people, and here, you retweet and do whatever you need to do. Let me know what the message is and I'll help that.
Then it expands out into what do you guys need? I've got a few thousand dollars sitting around I was going to buy some shoes with, but yo, I'll buy a generator for you guys. You need that? What else do you need? I'm not trying to push my ideology or become the hero or become the face of it. It's to the point where I wasn't doing interviews, because I wanted the organizers to tell me what to say. I don't want to disrupt the message. But then when it became understood this was open, it wasn't a leader thing, it wasn't a one agenda thing, this was something that's open and the dialogue's for everybody to have. Then it's okay, cool. This is what I think, this is what it is, and it may be against what other people think but that's the point. We're having a conversation. So you know, I feel it's everybody's duty to better themselves and to help out their fellow human beings in whatever possible way they can.
== References ==
Category:2006 interviews
Category:2011 interviews
Category:Websites