Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. Curator Liz Munsell interviewed American rapper Lupe Fiasco, organized in partnership with Sky Gellatly and Peter Brockman of ICNCLST."Conversation with Lupe Fiasco". YouTube. April 23, 2020.
== Transcript ==
TRANSCRIPT 	TRANSCRIPT
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	...early hip-hop culture which [?] and its infancy in the late 70's and the early 80's, where the story begins had a lot of important players in it, including the twelve artists in our exhibition and, of course, including Basquiat. Basquiat's role in hip hop I think has been really understated, at least in our history but not by the many rappers who have made shout-outs to him on various tracks. And noted that in 1983, he produced this seminal track in hip hop history called "Beat Bop." And even sadly the day he died in 1988, he had plans to attend a Run-DMC live show that night. So his intersections with hip hop have really, really—as I said—been understated and we hoped that you as a defining figure of hip hop could speak a little bit to his legacy and influence on hip hop culture and talk to us about your own projects. I wanted to start with a question, your work is so highly visible in the realms of music but I think lesser known is how your practice intersects with the visual arts. You've cited Mark Rothko and Jean-Michel Basquiat as source material and inspiration for past and future projects. You assisted Futura, painting in his studio. So where did your interest in visual art begin and where is it taking now?
Lupe Fiasco 	I always wanted to create. So I've always been a creative and that went into me writing a little classroom comic book that we had in like the first grade, second grade. And then it became oh, I'm good at telling stories, you know. I'm good at writing things, and telling things, and stuff like that. So of course, culturally you get right into rap. So around 11, 12 years old, you get into oh, I can tell these stories and make raps out it. Basically rap's just telling a story, I'm good at telling stories, I'm good at rap. So that was the one that's been the longest-running, you know. All through high school, I got very serious with it, and then got my record deal when I was still kind of in high school. So I was kind of straight into the league. And then for the past 15 years, I've been Lupe Fiasco. But that search for the creative input, you know. Or create output, however you want to call it, the I/O. The same process of reference and putting stories and messaging together, it's not just located into stories, it's not just located in the audible. It's not just located in writing raps. I got a great idea for some photography, I'm like oh, I have a great idea for a painting. Oh, now I have a great idea for some mixed media, I have a great idea for that. And so kind of in between the teeth of my rap career, I started to do photography and just went around chasing subjects and doing little things. And then it was something where it's like you know what? I would really like to make a painting. But it's like, I don't know how to paint, so I'm gonna get somebody to paint this for me, I'm gonna do like a Jeff Koons: pay somebody to paint this thing for me type situation. And my friend who I asked to paint this thing for me told me no. And was like, why don't I teach you how to do it? So I became an apprentice with one of my friends and then I was like okay, I need to go to online art school to really get into the nuts and bolts of painting and color theory and composition, blah, blah, blah. As I'm still rapping, you know, as I'm still doing "Show Goes On" and "Kick, Push" and being a superstar. You know, I'm attentive to kind of brush strokes and learning and diving deep into artists and their careers and their reference points and their influences and inspirations.
So I've been doing that for maybe like the past eight, nine years, in that capacity and done some shows. At one point I was, I'm actually a member at the MFA on the low. I was doing a tour of a bunch of museums around the world and in the process of learning, right. So the learning process of becoming, I guess you can call it a visual artist. I still think, to use Futura's language from his talk, I still feel like I'm kind of a phony. So I'm trying to just be as authentic as I possibly can and still work to the process. So part of that is why I became a member of the MFA and a bunch of other museums to really just look at those places as institutions of learning that I can't get, maybe, going back to school-wise type situations. And I had the pleasure and opportunity to kind of piggyback Futura around the world, you know, a legend and a father figure to me. One of those foundational members of rap, too. Futura didn't mention this in his talk, but Futura actually has a rap from way back then. He has a rap record from way back then, which is fire, too. It's like super long, he's getting bars out. So even to be with a seminal figure, to have the opportunity to be around a seminal figure like Futura who not only a fantastic painter and a grandmaster of his craft, but he also is a rapper. It's like wow, like you were one of the early prototypes, you know primal movers of this thing that I do today and make a living off of and able to share with the world. You were an impactful figure in that. So, you know, yeah, that's my kind of blurb on my visual approaches. You know.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	Amazing. I was also shocked that you of all people should not have impostor syndrome on any account. So many of the most important artists in our history are self-taught. Jean-Michel Basquiat of course included. Can you tell us a little bit about how you first encountered, maybe it was in that process of learning about the visual arts, but Jean-Michel's work specifically and what it came to mean to you?
Lupe Fiasco 	Um, I was thinking about that all last night. I was like when did I first get introduced to Basquiat. And it's the same thing with like Futura. Like when did we first meet, how did that happen? It's all kind of like a blur. But I do know that the context in which I was introduced to not only Jean-Michel, but also Futura and KAWS and a flurry of other kind of street artists and now becoming some of the premier fine artists in the world, was through Hypebeast.
So there's a website called Hypebeast. And I was one of the first members of Hypebeast, you know, one of the first guys trying to chase down this pair of sneakers or this interesting t-shirt, not knowing nothing about street culture or anything like that. Or the extent of it and where things were coming and what the reference points were. You just see an interesting pair of shoes that isn't all white. Because you're like, oh, I just need a pair of white shoes and it's like, oh that shoe has a black stripe, no this one has a picture on, no that one has a little interesting logo, and this one has an interesting colorway. And when you start to get into the—you know, shout-out to Kevin Ma, who started the Hypebeast, and all of the early Hypebeasters back in the day. You immediately start to recognize that there's a relationship between product and art, of course. And I say that we are, people like myself, are the license generation. So we wear that, we get the products or the byproducts of those eras in the form of brands, in the form of like collaborations and t-shirts and sneakers and toys. So my first introduction to say, Futura was in this hunt. There's, you know, where do you go to find and stuff. What shoe was that, what figure is that, oh there.
If you ever go to New York, you know Lower East Side, you got to go to 360 Toy Group. You go to 360 Toy Group and the LES here make sure you hit up North too because you got to go to North and then hit you know [?] supreme which got in 360. And so you go into 360 Toy Group and Jakuan is there, the owner and proprietor. He's there and he's this nexus of all of these influences and streams of art and legacies from all over from the New York scene to what's happening in Japan to what's happening in Hong Kong, what's happening parts of Taiwan it might be something jumping anything that is producing in product. Jakuan has you know he's one of those places—was one of those places, unfortunately—that brought a lot of these things together. So my first time you know going into 360 Toy Group just a virgin and seeing like. You got all this stuff on the shelf which is pretty cool, but then there's the upper shelf where none of that stuff is for sale. And that's where like all the cool stuff is you know I go what's that you know and that is like a little kid and this is me you know with a career, with a video, with the MTV, with the whole thing by myself kind of backpacking through lower East Side looking for this toy store that I've seen on Hypebeast, you know. And you go in and it's like you know what is that and Jakuan is like yo, that is Futura. That is some figures that he did with Metacom, this music collaboration that he did, and that's what that is and that's the first time you do you like oh my god, oh my god what is this, who is that? Oh I need, I need, I need. And then you look across from this you know sold-out Futura collection and there's this one shoe, you know one shoe and you looking at the shootings like that's who's what's that who's that? He's like oh that's KAWS that's this collaboration with DC Shoes and KAWS did it or not okay I can't wait to get back to the internet, because I'm going to you know rabbit hole myself for a few weeks pulling all this in.
So Basquiat is the same way. A majority of us know Basquiat because of the crown, that logo. You know that significance and royalty and that iconic kind of piece. And then you kind of get from there maybe you step into the rabbit hole that is the life of Jean-Michel. But you might just end that a couple paintings a couple things but you go really, really deep. And fortunately, I had a chance to go to London and I was in a store called DPM-jot which again is like a another one of those crosssections of anything that's producing product of interest and a rarity of land at the store. And I went in there, and I seen a pair of shoes. It was like yo, like those shoes are crazy, like there's this crazy stitching on it. Then you look at the bottom and it's this crazy figure and then you look at the thing and then what do you see? You see the crown. You like oh yo is that—? You know, you make this connection this reference point from the crown that you have seen just kind of scattered about and randomly in culture then you start to say oh this job is oh that's his signature Jean-Michel Basquiat. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So it all starts from kind of like this product. And me, the type of person in the way I analyze and where research I'm a super nerd—a lot of people know this—you know, I'm one of the coolest rappers too, but I'm also a die-hard nerd. I'm the type of person when I go to the MFA or to a museum I'll look at the painting very quickly I'm like that's interesting, that's cool. But then I'm reading the placard on the side. I'm that guy, I'm that guy who's like not even looking at the painting but I'm reading because I want to know the motivations and the interests and the inspirations. So you get this shoe, and then that shoe becomes the doorway you know, become the the the footprint to follow the bread crumbs of this person. If you go a little bit behind the surface, you go a little bit deeper than just general culture or general collaboration you start to realize that this dude was this, you know, a grandmaster of our time. He is—when I say our Picasso, he's hip hop's Picasso, you know. He is our modern-day, avant-garde savant of just a painter but then that's just as a figure, as a cultural tour-de-force. So you're like I'm into Japanese fashion, I'm into the clothes. So it's like okay, Comme des Garçons, right? It's like oh, Comme des Garçons, yeah, I got some Comme des Garçons. And then in the process of that, who do you see? Jean-Michel Basquiat walking down the runway in Comme des Garçons. You're like oh, ahhh, right.
From that point, once the recognition that this guy was a force, you want to know about his life. You wanna know where he came from. Like, his relative. He's Black like me, oh my god, you know. I want to know more about his life, I want to know more about his creative process, I want to know more about the things that he's done. And fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to play it. For me, I look at it as a fortunate process. It's you have to do the work to access it because you can't just walk up to the street of your local gallery or your local museum and they're gonna have a Basquiat, right. He's so rarified, so wanted by the world at large. It's hard to see to find more than you know more than one Basquiat on display somewhere right. I say that to say you got to do the work, right. So you might just end up with the book and you get the book and now that becomes your I can't wait to see that painting, I can't wait to see that painting. Then you get a word that there's a Basquiat show in New York, there's a Basquiat show and Louis Vuitton. You be like, I'm on it let's go. And you're referencing those paintings kind of similar to how Futura was saying, he remembers seeing paintings at the show. Remembering Basquiat working on them. Like yo, that painting, I remember Basquiat at his house at the studio working on it now seen it in the show. For us it was like this book, you know. Or the back of his sneaker. It's like that's the thing from the thing. But because you have to put in that work to access to his work, once you get to it the appreciation is so crazy, like. You feel like I've put in so much effort to go dig into the body of his work, really get an understanding beyond just being visually stimulated but into the messaging, into the philosophy, into the schematic of revolution that some of his paintings are. How he's really speaking politically to injustice, how he's really speaking to all of these things which is hip hop. It is the visualization and the—I don't wanna call it the commodification—but the three-dimensional objectivity of rap. Of what hip-hop is, if you had to paint it. If it was a painting, it had to be expressed visually, it would be Basquiat. And I think that leans heavy when you see people like Jay-Z or people like Swizz Beatz, people who can actually afford a Basquiat painting. But seeing them so active in referencing and pushing and seeing his narrative and then using that. Especially Swizz Beatz, using that narrative of his life and saying like okay, I need to be that gallery person who pushed Basquiat for this next generation. I need to put myself in a position, because I know that there's more Basquiats. The culture and the society and the same mechanisms that produce Basquiat are still at work and at play, fortunately-unfortunately. And in that there are Basquiats being born. I want to be on the cutting edge of making sure that those people are pushed out and successful. So I think a lot of Basquiat, it isn't far of a stretch to say you know Basquiat's influence on hip hop is probably more optimal to say that Basquiat is hip-hop.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	I think of a figure like Fab Five Freddy when you're talking about Swiss Beatz. It stops being this kind of like philosophical crafter of all these connections and networks that eventually became post-graffiti culture and certainly Rammellzee, as well, being the first and foremost philosopher about graffiti letters. And Basquiat is, I think, in his time more loosely linked to hip hop and and thought of in a relation to like post-punk because of his amazing band, Gray. But yet hip hop, as you've spoken to, really claims him. But put punk and rock and hip hop. Were they really that separate in this time? Do you think that Jean-Michel is kind of a lone figure in uniting them, and are they really that separate today in your own practice?
Lupe Fiasco 	Uh, no, I actually have a punk band called Japanese Cartoon, so that's that's that part you know. Influenced by Ian Curtis in Joy Division, and I want to sing in a British accent and be weird and thrash around on stage. But I think at that time, I study kind of late 70's, you know. This formative, at least the commercial face of hip hop when hip hop started to go commercial. And if you study that era in the early 80's, you see that hip hop is still trying to figure out what it is, right. And there is no real—like you have hip hop bands touring or performing with punk bands in the same venue on the same stage with, you know. So it's not too much wearing the same clothes in a certain capacity. So even aesthetically, visually, fashion-wise, that there's still these relationships. And you see you see disco still in there providing the backing soundtrack to a lot of early kind of rap, early hip hop, in a certain capacity. And I think in that time it was just this crucible, right, and it was mixing and mixing. And again, to Futura's point, you see something like Rapture being this. If you have to take a snapshot of where it is at the time, in terms of its progression and how its kind of all congealing, you see something like Rapture we got this white woman rapping. This dude doing, there's like a Black guy in a tuxedo in a top hat doing ballet. Then you got another gal over here you know like Futura said, you got Basquiat DJing, right. You got Fab Five Freddy reference over here yeah Leo over here. And it feels like a punk rock video, but then there's like a dance. Just weird like stew that's happening. And I think in that kind of you know process, you start to get the formation of what hip hop is gonna be right. Like what is it going to be you know five years from now, ten years from now, you start to see it start to kind of congeal and go that play. And you see disco kind of die off, disco kind of gives off this is what I add to the pot. You see punk kind of separate into something else, but this is what I left. This is punk's piece. You get this almost like hip hop is kind of like this baby that was born, it kind of grew up in the midst all those influences, and then it's like okay, now you're getting kicked out the house. Now go out into the world and propagate and prosper and do what you need to do.
So I think there's this interesting kind of period of time or this moment in time where hip hop kind of detached from that crucible, that mix, it jumped up out the stew and went on to become what it is today and then you get all the refinements and everything else going into it. But you can still see the reference points. You can still go back and identify where this particular thing started to germinate, where this particular thing started to generate, and you can see where it just becomes recursive today, in what we do. We might feel sometimes that we're being so avant-garde or so new or so fresh and you can find a reference point somewhere back in the 80's, late 70's, mid-80's where the Basquiats and the Futuras and the Lees and the Fab Five Freddys and all these people were still cooking, cooking, cooking. And even to the point where Fab Five Freddy, he's such a phenomenal power it's almost scary. Well like, Fab Five Freddy was part of Crucial Conflict which was this hip hop group that came out of Chicago that I was a huge fan of, right, and you look at the back of the CD and you're like you know who's part of this thing, Crucial Conflict, and you see Fab Five Freddy right. Not to mention you on TV raps and all those other things. People like Fab Five Freddy, there's no way you can disconnect them from what this is. And because you can't disconnect Fab, you can't disconnect Basquiat, you can't disconnect Futura. I think even if they wanted to leave and go become like super fuddy-duddy Italian art scene guys like that. I think because they're the source material and their foundations and how those foundations are still being replayed today, they'll always be here, you know, always.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	Too important, yeah. Too important. But every generation will kind of pick up those threads in their own way and that's what's sort of magic about something that is so strong it can can birth so many new movements, so many new forms of cultural expression. So on that note, can you tell us a little bit more in-depth and get as technical as you can about your Jean-Michel Basquiat project, goals, the research process you went into. And what you think it might look like for us, your fans, who for waiting this someday?
Lupe Fiasco 	Oh my god. Uh, Skulls, bam. So around maybe... okay, so my work—what I feel is my best work—just in general from creative standpoint and where I always kind of saw myself find myself falling back to a prototype. And I just literally gave it a name like maybe last year, because it took me, you know, retrospectively looking back through my work and seeing what stood out and what didn't. And one of the things that stood out was this thing that I'll call resurrectives, right. So on my first album Food and Liquor, that had a song on it called "The Cool" produced by Kanye West and it was me riffing off of "Thriller," right. So I see "Thriller" I'm like yo, the biggest phenoms in culture which never die are zombies, right? And I was just like yo, okay, zombies right? And I was like okay, I need a song about zombies on my album. And then you get The Cool, you get the birth of The Cool. Shout-out to Miles Davis. Once you get the birth of The Cool in that process of referencing Michael Jackson's "Thriller." And then so okay, let me write this story let me you know give my little—you know, dress it up how I dress it up. And then it goes on to become, you know, the foundation for the next album.
So now the next second album is The Cool, the entire album, and you start to expand the storyline of bringing things back to life. That process of bringing things back to life, creating projects about bringing things back to life became almost like a cheat code for me. Where I was like, you know what, I can do that really good. People react to it really well and if I refine that process, it becomes even more of something of interest above and beyond just a piece of music. So I went on the starts creating these—you can call them almost portraits. But I'll separate the portraits and come back to that but on the on terms of resurrectives I started wrote the song called. There was a little girl named Jonylah who was unfortunately killed in Chicago a few years ago, a little baby got shot in the midst of this very unfortunate situation. And she died and it was for me it was a huge blow, it was so you know, trying to fight the good fight for the city and then for something that tragic to happen and it sent a shockwave through the whole city. Even like hardcore killers and gangbangers, everybody was just kind of like shook that the streets were capable of producing such things. And I didn't want her to die and I remember being in the studio and I was like, I don't want Jonylah to die. So I did a song called "Jonylah Forever" and crafted it where the storyline started as her as a child and you see her grow up and you see these other things and she grows up to become a doctor. And then she witnesses the shooting and then goes and performs triage and is able to save the the child, who was revealed at the end of the song, is herself. And it was the most emotion I've probably ever put into a record and put it out and it was just. People who I didn't expect to react to it, reacted to it. And that unfortunateness, it's a way of taking something very terrible and turning into something beautiful. And so I went on to do it again with with with Alan Kurdi, the young boy who fell off the side of the boat as he was leaving Libya trying to get to Europe with his family. He fell off the boat and drowned and I was another one. Where it was like let me jump in and save him you know and bring him back to life. And again, the same way, he grows up becomes a swimmer. Becomes a diver sees sees the kid off of the boat he jumps in the water brings him back to life, goes on CPR saves him right and in that process saves himself and goes on forever.
So you have this piece of these resurrectives, and then I got into. It's rare that you see artists pay homage to other artists through art, right, with a piece. And you see something like Basquiat with his plates painting Fab Five Freddy, painting Futura, I was like who does that in rap? Who's doing that for rappers, or who's doing that in rap for other artists? So I wanted to kind of take up that mantle of doing portraits of people, lyrically, with raps. And the first one that I did was of Mark Rothko. Huge Mark Rothko fan, huge abstract expressionist fan, huge New York City fan. The old New York, the old, old New York, so not just 80's New York, old 50's New York. Huge fan of that scene and I was like okay, in order to do this portrait, I need to know what I'm talking about. So I just dug into Mark Rothko's life. I got the books, studied documentaries, studied his paintings, studied how things configured. His early periods, his surrealist period, you know. Visited Rothko Chapel, just the whole kind of gambit of research and process as much as I could to get at least when I told his story, that in the factual parts of it would be factually correct. You know, I wouldn't be infringing upon anybody, making the family upset. And so I did that in three pieces, and first it was "Rothko for Humans," "Rothko for Cyborgs," "Rothko for Computers," and then took the wave forms of the recording and it looked like a Rothko painting and each progressive song had a different waveform pattern and then I took those and they became that album artwork for it. I only did one copy, and I gave it to MIT. So it's actually sitting in Boston at MIT, the only copy of Rothko.
And then I turned my sights on just other artists beyond Rothko and it was, you know. Royce da 5'9" from Detroit, he was an amazing rapper out of Detroit. And wrote a portrait for him, you know, "Portrait of Royce" to show how much I appreciate what you do, and who you are, and a little bit of your story, and a little fanciful, and a little of this. Now I'm working on something with Amy Winehouse in the same capacity, a little bit bigger project. So all that to set up that about 2012, I was like you know who needs this? Basquiat. And I've never seen... uh, I started. I was like okay, I'm going to do a biography or autobiography—I don't even know what you properly call it, autobiography, biography. You write it for somebody else, I don't know. Think it's biography, right? I'm gonna do this biography of Basquiat. I'm at the end of my record contract with my record company, this is my last album is going to be portrait of Basquiat and a resurrective in certain capacities and a full-length album. The Rothko piece is one song. It was three songs actually. The Royce da 5'9" was like one verse. The Amy Winehouse piece is gonna be like maybe six or seven songs. But the Basquiat was gonna be a full album. So I started the research process of like okay, who do I need to talk to, what do I need to watch, what I need to see? So I got all the autobiographies and books and painting, catalogs, and documentaries, and movies and luckily I had access to Fab Five Freddy. I called Fab up, just like hey, this is what I'm doing, I'm doing this thing on Basquiat's life. I'm a student. What do I need to do, how do I make this correct? Is it something that is wanted? Is this something that's needed? Is this something that I should, do you know? Is it disrespectful, will people take it the wrong way? You know, what are some things and cues that you can kind of give me, since you've know him very much so well in part of his career. And I just sat down and talked with Fab Five Freddy, but I don't even know how long. We talked for a nice bit, to kind of polish off all of this other kind of academic research that I've done before I started writing.
So then I started to gather the music, pull the beats in. Start to write a couple choruses and really just started to do the the work of translating that analysis and research into actual verses and actual words, and sentences, verses, and stuff like that. And in that process, was I usurped by a really good friend of mine by the name of Mickey Factz, who's a great rapper from the Bronx. And while we're on this and we're talking about Basquiat and geniuses who kind of went out in their primes or pre-primes. Today we just lost one of one of the the best MCs of all time. A master of his craft by the name Fred the Godson, who just passed away from I want to say complications with COVID-19. So, you know, even we now as Futura was kind of referencing, people who had passed away in his process and in the [?] scene. We today in our craft which we love and cherish so much, as much as Futura and all those guys love and cherish they're singing their craft, we're losing Basquiats to what's going on. He was a great fixture in our scene, and we're gonna miss him. But Mickey Factz, I kind of let gave him wind of like yo, you know I'm doing this this thing, it's Basquiat thing. He was like yo, I'm working on this project called "Mouse" where it's not the life of Basquiat, but I'm inserting myself historically into the 1980's New York scene and pretending that I am an artist of that era. And I'm inserting myself fictionally into you know, Keith Haring and Futura and Fab Five Freddy and Basquiat and I'm referencing and meeting them on the way. And not only am I doing that, I'm actually living that. So he went and slept in the park and like was jumping on police cars and to really like do some method acting in terms of building up this character. And I was so blown away, right, that I was like I can't do this. He's one-upped me, he did the whole. There was this great story, Andy Warhol and Lichtenstein right, where Lichtenstein. He. First Warhol was doing the comic book prints, and he seen like Lichtenstein's and was like, yours look better, I'mma just paint these cans because you can have the comic book strips and everything. I'mma just do this. So I feel like we have our Warhol's Lichtenstein in that piece.
So I kind of put it to the side and I pulled out the life of Basquiat angles where I was already forward in creating certain choruses. There was a song called "Séance"—actually, I think it was called "Brooklyn"—and it was Brooklyn in the house, and it was really referencing Basquiat's birth and that would've been the point where he would come back to life kind of through this séance, right. And you ask if Brooklyn is in the house, but imagine doing that kind of round of a Ouija board kind of medium séance type thing to kind of resurrect him again. And you had other songs like, it's called "Live Dangerous" where the the chorus was—the course still is, now I'm saying was but it still is. Where was 'I wanna live dangerous by any means. I wanna be famous by any means, I want to live dangerous in limousines.' Which references kind of the end, where he was in a limousine, you know, or supposed to get a limousine and going to see Run-DMC at Madison Square Garden and all of that stuff. And then referencing other parts of his life and story where was this raw force to make it, you know. To conquer the art world and be somebody, and do that by any means necessary kind of a situation.
So it was things like artifacts of that, that are kind of still left in the process and I started to write other songs around them. And then just kind of put it you know to to the side. This was back in like 2012, maybe 2011, somewhere around there. And post that, you see folks like Jay-Z really embrace Basquiat and throw him in the out again. You see Swizz Beatz, you see other folks in the hip hop community reference his work and push him out there and give him the kind of credit and to the new generation. So I feel like oh, well that work's already being done. People are pushing out the life of Basquiat. You see now even the last Basquiat show I saw was in Louis Vuitton, which is super interesting because it's like you're gonna see Basquiat. Now Virgil's running Louis Vuitton and Basquiat-Virgil, the connections just keep coming back. It was just kind of like, you know, his legacy is great, his legacy safe, it doesn't require me to do it. But now I'm so motivated. So it's like oh man, maybe I should go back finish that work and put it out there to the world.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	We need your Warhol cans.
Lupe Fiasco 	[Laughs.] Was it Lichtenstein? I want to be sure that it was Lichtenstein, or am I misquoting?
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	Lichtenstein is the one who does the—yeah, the comic book works of the band-aid dots.
Lupe Fiasco 	Yeah, yeah, so it was Lichtenstein. I felt usurped, I felt that Mickey had done it better and I was like, ah, because you did it better, I can't be one-upped. I'm gonna move onto Amy Winehouse, then, since you doing that. But now I actually feel motivated through the conversation, and you all reached out, and Sky, and everybody reached out and brought that up. It is something that was—is super relevant to me, and even the title Skulls comes from one of the one of the titles that somebody just kind of gave to one of Basquiat's untitled works, which is one of his famous head pieces. And so it's like, oh, that's the name of one of your albums, Skulls?
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	We've been showing images from Basquiat's series anatomy from 1982 which is his first portfolio of silkscreen prints that draws from Grey's Anatomy, the important scientific medical book that he used to studying different parts of the human body and and learned to draw by copying them as a child when he was in the hospital recovering from an accident and had his spleen removed. So those are the images that viewers have been seeing on the screen and the body was obviously so central including the skull as such a primary part of the body to Basquiat's practice so, so apt that you that you've titled the project that and I I can only hope that we, you provide some motivation. Maybe you can get it out in time for a show to open.
Lupe Fiasco 	Yeah, or even come. Maybe finish off a few of the songs and maybe just come and perform those, that might be kind of cool.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	Oh, we would be so honored. So I wanted to ask one final question of you, Lupe, which is what other projects are you working on in this moment? Do you have any advice on how to stay focused and stay productive for so many artists who are struggling in this moment, and maybe even some directions for institutions that are looking for new ways to get their creativity out there in the world.
Lupe Fiasco 	Um, I mean. Just create, you know. For me, there's painting. I got my little studio set up around the corner here on my coffee table. Little laptop and thing and currently working away and whitling away at songs day-by-day as the day's wane.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	Can you tell us a little bit about that painting, actually?
Lupe Fiasco 	This painting right here? It's a commission, actually, before a collector based out of Hong Kong who's actually one of my business partners so shout-out to Bonnie. This is Bonnie's painting, so she's probably like super happy because I didn't show it to her. I was supposed to ship it to New York prior to all of the COVID-19 stuff, so that kind of put a dent in the plans. So this is her first time seeing it. But yeah, I do... My work is, we talked about Skulls. I looked at it as being—again, I'm referencing points—so I'm all about taking this little thing and you know interpolating it with this and interpolating with that interpolating in this. And when I got into visual work, you're looking for things to do and it's like everything has been done before, so to speak. What is there new to do and it's really to interpolate, to take the things that inspire you, the artists or the scenes or the periods or epochs. Styles that speak to you as an artist and things that you can actually accomplish and do. You know, I can't you know do photo realistic drawings of people's faces but I can take multiple reference points and incorporate them together. I always say that my skulls come from séances on my, you know, favorite paintings are séance Skulls paintings is vanitas. And then my textures come from Kazuo Shiraga. His version of action painting, and then what's left, you know. The artifacts and things are left of him painting with his feet yeah. It's like oh my god, this dude's tied himself painting with his feet and come out with these these things. So it's like oh, I want to capture those textures in my figure, you know Shiraga. My colorway is our Francis Bacon, I love taking these very these pinks and these blues and these oranges and these other kind of things and mismatch and all those things together. And then the era that I kind of love is Catholic, kind of Christian Church paintings and scenes of like Golgotha and Ossuaries and charnel houses and Memento mori and things that come in and tell that type of story of the remembrance of the remembrance of life through death the embrace of death. Constantly staying on your toes and remind yourself to live the complete life because the dance of death is right around the corner. And to make the most out of things.
So for me that is the source of my paintings and how I approach materiality, how I approach composition and stuff like that. It takes me a long-ass time to do them, so they're very sparse. They're not quick processes, so for you artists out there that are you know trying. If you need that immediate gratification, make sure you pick something that you can, you know, at least show proof of and by the end of the day you know don't do something that takes a few weeks or months to kind of complete. And I think just kind of stay focused. Futura said this earlier you know in reference you know with artists are kind of sitting in their studios and in their living rooms and people who aren't even artists people who used to have a very technical job and are now forced to create or push to now be creative in a certain capacity. The sign of the times, there's there's a rich environment of you know of emotion and struggle and pain and things that need to be articulated. You know, that beg to be articulated, and beg to be archived and beg to be drawn in these times and it's no different from a lot of these the painting the Catholic paintings. Which you know, a lot of the Memento mori and the vanitas paintings, they come out of plague. They come out of the plague eras and people trying to find some type of meaning and reasoning behind what's going on and they articulated through you know plague paintings or scenes of a vanitas and the fragility of life in every season whether it be the tuberculosis era of painting and people romanticized in that era, or people really just trying to come to terms—even with Basquiat and his last painting, right? Which was him rocking with death, you know, basically. The hold of white horse, kind of pale horse, pale rider type situation. This is last painting referencing, projecting his death and I think in those periods of time where maybe McCobb and it made me sad you know fight for that. Create don't go what they say don't go quiet into rage, rage into the dying of the light? You know, now is the time for creatives to really be inspired and create mercilessly with no regard for what people say or think or feel to just really get your shit off, as we say, in the rap world.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	Well you are an inspiration. Thank you so much for putting so much art in so many different forms out into the world. Thank you for being a nerd, thanks for reading those labels curators and researchers work so hard to write at the MFA.
Lupe Fiasco 	And uh, shout—don't mean to cut you off, I do want to send a shout-out to the MFA, all the curators, all the people who are temporarily out of work right now, and the things that you do. And not just the MFA, but every other artistic institution and academy that's on a hiatus right now and it's so important the work that you guys and gals do. Curating and archiving and presen—even in the midst of things like this, still finding ways to be inventive to curate the story of Jean-Michel Basquiat and his influence on what I do, what every other rapper and hip hop artist does, whether they are conscious of it or not. So I really, really appreciate you doing that and giving Futura that shine. Futura's like, you know, big Poppa. But really appreciate you for taking the time and doing this even in the midst of what's going on right now.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	Thank you so much Lupe, we do what we do because of artists like you. So thank you so much, thanks everyone for joining us. Come see us in the flesh soon. Peace out.
Lupe Fiasco 	Peace.
== Gallery ==
Year 	Title 	Video
2020 	"Conversation with Lupe Fiasco" 	
Grammy Award-winning musician Lupe Fiasco discusses Jean-Michel Basquiat's enduring legacy and influence on contemporary hip-hop with Liz Munsell, Lorraine and Alan Bressler Curator of Contemporary Art. The conversation is presented in conjunction with our exhibition "Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation.	Grammy Award-winning musician Lupe Fiasco discusses Jean-Michel Basquiat's enduring legacy and influence on contemporary hip-hop with Liz Munsell, Lorraine and Alan Bressler Curator of Contemporary Art. The conversation is presented in conjunction with our exhibition "Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation.	Grammy Award-winning musician Lupe Fiasco discusses Jean-Michel Basquiat's enduring legacy and influence on contemporary hip-hop with Liz Munsell, Lorraine and Alan Bressler Curator of Contemporary Art. The conversation is presented in conjunction with our exhibition "Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation.
== References ==
Category:2020 interviews
Category:Museums