Entertainment Weekly

*Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor*This article is part of the Food & Liquor era.Released: September 19, 2006
Label: 1st & 15th Entertainment / Atlantic RecordsCategory
*Lupe Fiasco's The Cool*This article is part of the The Cool era.Released: December 18, 2007
Label: 1st & 15th Entertainment / Atlantic RecordsCategory

## ***Entertainment Weekly***

### **Website**

ew.com

***Entertainment Weekly*** (***EW***) is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular culture. The magazine debuted on February 16, 1990, in New York City, and ceased print publication in 2022. They interviewed American rapper Lupe Fiasco in 2006, 2007, and 2008.

## Articles

### 2006

BANKSY POSTCARD "I'm a huge fan of this English artist Banksy. He's very political and does cool social commentary; he's a visual genius. I got this at a show of his in London. I tried to get him to do the album cover, but I could never find him."

NINTENDO DS "I'm a huge Nintendo fan. My handle on my BlackBerry is 'Game Boy Advance.' I always carry two of them with me."

SKETCHBOOK "It's from a company called Philosophy, out of Japan. The book is like a diary, where I design clothes and fashion and stuff. I have a few rhymes in there, too."

KORAN "That's the Koran that I got from my father. It's really beaten up because I've taken it around the world. It's been through a lot."

DOLL "I collect toys, and my friend Shawn Smith, [who] has a company called Shawnimals that makes plush toys, made me a special, small pocket ninja. I always have it with me, hanging from my belt."

ROBOT "I have some friends from Singapore who have a company called LMAC. It started as a toy company, then a fashion company. That was the first toy they made…the zombie."

### 2007

**ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Tell me about where your first single, "Superstar," came from. That seems to be about the experience of a musician rising to fame, right?**

**LUPE FIASCO:** I took the looseness of the record from a Tom Waits song off his new album, *Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards*. The record comes from taking different themes and very dark, very macabre scenes, and placing them in a very poppy, commercial realm. There's many instances in the song, but one of the main instances is, [if] going to heaven was like a club, and so you had to wait, and the beautiful people went in front of you. Then there would be situations where I would contrast an execution [that] looks like a performance — people are waiting to see this person die, and they fill up the front row to watch a man die. It comes from, how am I digesting being famous and celebrity? It's like success and fame balanced with tragedy and infamy.

**Another new song, "Little Weapon," was produced by Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy. What was it like working with him?**

He called me, like, "I want to do a record for The Cool." And I was telling people, "This album's dark, so the music needs to be dark but futuristic." So he sent the beat for "Little Weapon." And I had a set list of things that I wanted to address on this album: I wanted to address the climate, which I didn't really do, and I wanted to address child soldiers. I actually met these guys that run this organization called Invisible Children backstage at a Fall Out Boy show, and I did "Little Weapon" as an ode to that [issue]. My partner Bishop G is on there taking the last verse. And the twist in the story is the little kid playing the video game — is he any different from the child soldier actually killing people? Because death is death, whether it's digital death or real death.

**How about "Streets on Fire," where you bring in the character of The Streets?**

At the beginning of the song, [singer] Matthew Santos lists all these tragedies, and then it says, "She's out there smiling." It comes from *1984*, the book, where there was so much double-talk and double-think in the first few chapters. That's my favorite book. I tried to put that in a record. So it's like, "Believe/So say the neon signs by the loudspeakers/Repeating that everything is fine." You know? "A subtle silence/To demolish the troubled conscience/Of a populace with no knowledge/And every freedom denied." It comes directly influenced by *1984* — using it as a vehicle to introduce one of the characters very abstractly, very subtly.

**"Dumb it Down" is another song that I heard a few weeks ago on YouTube. Those catchy hooks with different people urging you to dumb down your music. Do you really get that a lot?**

It's kind of perceived. My peoples that frequent clubs and go in the streets and things of that nature, they'll be like, "Yo man, this is what they're saying in the hood: 'I'm not really feeling Lupe.'" Those are real conversations that I get the gist of. And then the second hook is more Big Brother-influenced, which is that unspoken — and in some cases spoken behind closed doors — mentality and agenda of a lot of different [record] companies. To actually be like, "Let's push some bulls--- today." That song touches on one of the base themes for *The Cool*: I went to go see Cornel West speak, and he said, "If you really want to affect social change in the world, you have to make those things which are cool and destructive, uncool. You have to make it hip to be square." "Dumb it Down" was showing that. Like, the verses are super-duper complex, but the hook itself is telling the verses, like, "Damn, yo, dumb it down! This is why we're saying you need to dumb it down. Nobody just got that verse you just said, and that's why you're really not going to sell too many records." It's showing that: "They're starting to think that smart is cool, Lu/Dumb it down/They're starting to get up out the hood, Lu/Dumb it down." It's like, "We need to keep them there so we can constantly sell them things."

**I heard in a few songs there you mentioned the name of your next album, *L-U-P-End*. So I take it you're sticking to your promise of making three albums and then you're out?**

Yeah, I think so. I'm 85 percent. My final album is *L-U-P-End*, and it comes from video games. I love video games, especially Capcom, and you can only put three letters when the game is over — three letters and *END.*

**Do you have a concept for that album yet?**

I don't know. I was thinking about having it be very schizophrenic, just all over the place and loaded with features. Or having, like, 10 songs, like back in the day when they'd do 10 songs and be done.

**You're obviously someone who puts a lot of thought and intelligence into your albums. After you make your third album, what are you going to do with all that creative energy?**

Oh, I'm writing my book! It's tentatively titled *Reflections of a Window-Washer*. It's about this character who has limited amount of conversation with the world. But he has simulated conversations, as if he had ever went past saying to someone, "Hi." It's a real cerebral kind of piece. I've got maybe just a few chapters. They published one of the chapterettes in a magazine in London, where [the character] sits and ponders the notion, the physics, the ideals, the commercialization of the future.

**So you can see yourself becoming a novelist full-time?**

Yeah! That's where this [music] comes from. Hip-hop is like a byproduct of telling stories and writing. Some of the stuff that I want to talk about can't be compressed into a song.

**When you envision that being published, would you have your birth name on the cover?**

Oh, yeah. Wasalu Muhammad Jaco. WMJ. Eventually, Lupe Fiasco is this, he's music. He's going to be done. Wasalu Jaco writes for Lupe Fiasco, you know?

**This year, concept albums in hip-hop have become a big thing — Jay-Z's calling his album a concept album, T.I. called his album a concept album. Why do you think that is?**

Well, MF Doom did concept albums. Prince Paul, all he does is concept albums. Even the guy from Onyx [Sticky Fingaz] did a concept album, *Autobiography of Kirk Jones*. So it's been concept albums here, there, around. I think what happens is — especially in Jay-Z's case — you've done it so much and you've put yourself in a place where if you try and do anything different, it'll turn against you. So how do you continue to improve and revolutionize what you're doing already? A concept album. "Yeah, I can talk about everything I want to talk about, and put it under the premise of a concept." But I think it's dope, if it comes across. I chose to do it very abstractly, very subtly, and more to dress up the album very lightly. But I think it's cool. Especially T.I.'s, the concept of it was very good.

**What's the status of CRS, your supergroup with Kanye West and Pharrell Williams?**

Child Rebel Soldier. We working. Kanye called me the other day, he said he had spoken to Pharrell, and everybody's still excited, ready to go. It's just scheduling issues, but it's solid gold, late '08. We'll see.

### 2008

#### January 11

**Major Influences**

Nas, Thelonious Monk, George Orwell, Friedrich Nietzsche, Benny Goodman

**The Name Game**

Lupe is an extension of his childhood nickname, Lu. Fiasco comes from a song called "Firm Fiasco" by rap supergroup the Firm.

**By the Numbers**

2 major-label releases; 4 Grammy nods; 553,713 MySpace friends; 554,000 total album units sold; 2,774,395 views of the official "Superstar" video on YouTube

**Big Break**

Jay-Z was so impressed by Fiasco's cameo on Kanye West's 2006 "Touch the Sky" that he agreed to executive-produce his debut CD, *Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor*.

#### January 17

**You were labeled "the skateboard rapper" when you dropped the single "Kick, Push" from *Food & Liquor*. But *The Cool* has more of an eye on street life. Are you courting a new audience?**

**LUPE FIASCO** I didn't go out shooting for anybody in particular because I shot for everybody *unparticular*. I make records for Muslims, Christians, rock 'n' roll kids, skateboard kids…. The song "The Coolest" might turn you off because the hook is "The coolest n—a, what! The coolest n—a, what!" You might not like the word n—a, and to hear it repeated at least 15, 20 times, you may be like, "No. I don't like that." But you might be like, "I really like 'Intruder Alert' because I know somebody that was raped — or I was raped — and I'm glad somebody shined a light on it."

**Were you concerned that *The Cool* might turn off your skateboard fans?**

Not really, because I always put myself as a storyteller first. I talk about the same concepts as Young Jeezy, but I deglamorize it and put it on a cinematic level that leaves it open to interpretation on more levels than [just saying], "I'm selling dope. This is what it is." It has pieces of me, but it also has pieces of you, pieces of him, pieces of her…. So in essence, the story is of all of us. The Cool, the Streets, and the Game — those characters represent all of us.

***Food & Liquor*** **earned three Grammy nominations in 2007, and it just picked up a fourth for 2008. How does that feel?**

I love it because that's the highest you can go in music. And to be recognized for work on my first album when I'm fittin' to come out with another album? It has the more primal, "In yo' face! Hold my nuts! I got another Grammy [nomination]! You know how a n—a do. We gonna do it real big!" That's in me as well.

**Wow! That's a side of you that we rarely get to see.**

I grew up in the hood around prostitutes, drug dealers, killers, and gangbangers, but I also grew up juxtaposed: On the doorknob outside of our apartment, there was blood from some guy who got shot; but inside, there was *National Geographic* magazines and encyclopedias and a little library bookshelf situation. And we didn't have cable, so we didn't have the luxury of having our brains washed by MTV. We watched public television — cooking shows and stuff like that.

**Your dad was a martial-arts expert…**

My father was a Renaissance man. He was an operating plant engineer, a musician, and a martial artist. He had eight black belts and taught [martial arts] for 40 years. He was also in the military and the Black Panthers. My mother [Shirley Jaco] was an intellectual and a chef. I got nine brothers and sisters. Three of us have the same mother and father, everyone else is half brothers and sisters.

**Who were you raised by?**

It was like we were at my mother's house to go to school and then after school, my father would come get us and take us out into the world — one day, we're listening to N.W.A; the next day, we're listening to Ravi Shankar; the next day, he's teaching us how to shoot an AK-47; the next day, we're at karate class; the next day, we're in Chinatown; the next day, we're in a weird-ass Pakistani store looking for a rug…. We experienced everything with my father because the things he was into were so vast.

**Did your family convert to Islam or were you raised Muslim?**

We weren't raised Muslim — we were born Muslim. I didn't go to a Muslim school, but it was just the theme song. It was ambient.

**Have you ever rebelled against your faith?**

Smoking and drinking, that stuff was never a problem because I never had a genuine interest in it. Females were different because I had a genuine interest in females.

**Is it true that you hated hip-hop when you were a kid?**

Yeah. That's when I was 7, 8, 9 — because hip-hop was battling Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and jazz. I wanted to be like Benny Goodman.

**Did you get picked on a lot when you were a kid?**

When the gangbangers would try to pull it, I was like, "Yo, I will f— you up. And if you wanna call your cousin, call him. I'll call me! I'll call me right now." We were shooting TEC-9s when we were babies, so the whole gangsta image, that ain't nothing. When I was growing up, there was a crack house next door to us and they were trying to expand. My father was like, Are you serious? He took his gun, walked next door, and said, "You're done," while I aimed my gun out of the window. I was 13 or 14 and to see that, a lot of the facade and the upkeep [of trying] to impress people was eliminated very early for me.

**You've said your next CD, tentatively titled *LupEND*, will be your last. How committed are you to that plan?**

Like 85 percent.

**How many albums are you contracted to do?**

Five.

**So then why are you saying your next CD will be your last if you're going to have two more albums left on your contract?**

Because I don't have to do 'em. There's renegotiations and all types of other plays and ploys that you can put into effect. I'll pay Atlantic back or whatever. It's like a student loan. [When reached, Atlantic Records had no comment.]

**Why would you want to pay Atlantic to get out of your contract rather than fulfilling it?**

Because that cost is less than the [toll that] is being taken on me.

**But at age 25, aren't you awfully young for retirement?**

This game wears on you. It tears you down. It's perpetual motion for some people who've achieved a level of independence, like Madonna and Jay-Z — they don't need to do music anymore. But there's people who need it. And in that need, that's when it's tough and it tears you to pieces. But my goals are low. My ceiling is low. I'm not on a $100 million hustle because I know what it takes to get $100 million in music. It's like they're paying you, but how much is your independence, your soul, and your sanity worth?

## References

1. ↑ Endelman, Michael (October 20, 2006). "A Few of Lupe Fiasco's Favorite Things". *Entertainment Weekly*.
2. ↑ Vozick-Levinson, Simon (November 16, 2007). "Lupe Fiasco Deciphers His Upcoming Concept CD". *Entertainment Weekly*.
3. ↑ Watson, Margeaux (January 11, 2008). "Meet Rapper Lupe Fiasco". *Entertainment Weekly*.
4. ↑ Watson, Margeaux (January 17, 2008). "The Successes of Rapper Lupe Fiasco". *Entertainment Weekly*.
5. ↑ Hermes, Will (September 29, 2006). "Food & Liquor". *Entertainment Weekly*. Archived from the original on February 2, 2017.
6. ↑ Willman, Chris (December 18, 2007). "Lupe Fiasco's The Cool". *Entertainment Weekly*. Archived from the original on December 18, 2007
7. ↑ Wete, Brad (March 3, 2011). "*Lasers*". *Entertainment Weekly*.
8. ↑ Anderson, Kyle (September 28, 2012). "Albums: Oct. 5, 2012". *Entertainment Weekly*.