Precious Things

## Song by Lupe Fiasco featuring Nayirah

"**Precious Things**" (stylized in all caps) is the fourth track from Lupe Fiasco's eighth studio album, *Drill Music in Zion* (2022). It features guest vocals from Nayirah on the chorus. Fiasco uses anthropomorphism, centered on hands, which in turn symbolizes dualism such as peace versus violence and purity versus corruption; one's own actions that hold power in interacting with both good and evil.

## Music video

The accompanying music video premiered January 15, 2022, written and directed by Albert Figurt. It depicts fan conspiracy theories, which Fiasco seems to poke fun at by the video getting increasingly irrational.

First, a tab is opened on Firefox to type in 'precious things lupe.' Going to the YouTube video, they click below on 'Learn More'. Overhead in the tab section it reads 'Toxic News,' 'WikiLeaks,' 'OTAMATONE,' and 'KnowYourMEME.' Followed by this is heading to the Genius website, which gives annotations to the lyrics. They highlight translated lines from the Quran which reads "On this day we will seal their mouths, their hands will speak to us..." This leads to Googling 'lupe fiasco hand gestures,' and they screenshot random photos of his hands.

Next, they highlight the release date of the song (June 24, 2022), which broken down forms 666, the Devil's number (6/2+4/2+2+2); search Nayirah's name that leads to a Wikipedia page where a girl gave a "false testimony;" and a throwback Reddit post of Fiasco who had dental surgery. Another Reddit post shows the relation between the song and Vampire Hunter D and Alucard, where they type in a separate note, 'alucarDracula' with numbers below that read 8, 1 15.

The word 'Red Pill' is displayed on the desktop screen, a phrase used to describe how a person's perspective is changed drastically to the new and disturbing true nature of a situation. The 'Q8 Oils' site is shown and the language selected is Italian. This leads to a tweet by Fiasco on November 3, 2022, which highlights 'extracted DNA from a strawberry.' The colors of the Kuwait flag are similar to Italy's, with the primary colors of green, white, and red being used. The MIT motto includes "mind and hand," the latter highlighted to relate to Fiasco's hand gestures. Followed by this is QAnon typed in the web, a conspiracy theory, which leads to them typing Q conspiracy italy. They go back to Twitter and highlight the word "surreal!" in a tweet. Next is the Wikipedia article *There Will Be Blood* which highlights "blood" and hovers over "oilman". This goes to an article which explains who QAnon are. Then they head to one of Fiasco's lectures at MIT where he talked about Optimal Novelty and the Société Internationale d'Ur. This leads to a *HotNewHipHop* article where the headline states, "Lupe Fiasco Says Fighting COVID-19 Requires Taking The..." then a page is shown on DALL-E, which reads, in the search bar, "hip-hop secret manual doctrine" accompanied below by pictures of hand signs. After they type in "lupe fiasco as undercover dampyr," it flips to a YouTube MIT video that highlights on the word "degenerative."

This goes to the *DailyArt* article, "10 Times When Egon Schiele Mastered Hip Hop Hand Gestures," leading to "finger binary," then the full *HNHH* title which continues "vaccine or contracting conronavirus." A screenshot of Fiasco's hands has the dimension in 216 and 180. This leads to a comment on reddit, "Lupe pre Tetsuo was a magician," then scrolling down to highlight "P & B.." This switches to the article "The Front Page: Has Fifa learned anything from its Qatar fiasco?" with the last two words highlighted. Then it goes to the search "is lupe fiasco flirting with esotericism in his lyrics? Above are tabs that read 'Bacon Oracle' and 'Gravity's RainboWIKI.' Bacon Oracle may refer to the fact that the objective is to link any person in the smallest possible amount of links to Kevin Bacon; in this case, Fiasco uses it to link back to himself. Thomas Pynchon's novel *Gravity's Rainbow* is a book that uses satire by its unrealistic plot and grim humor.

This leads to another article that states that Fiasco believes he was visited by aliens at age 11. Then it goes to Instagram that shows the first Ur tournament held at MIT. Typed into the Library Genesis search bar is 'chomsky MIT press.' Next is a page on Ur, an Ancient city that was in Iraq. Library Genesis shows a result that says "Lupe Fiasco's post-conceptual word-twisting". Followed by this is many finger gestures on a Wikipedia article, then going to Dyadic fractions. Next, they go to the book on Goodreads: *The Morning of the Magicians: Secret Societies, Conspiracies, and Vanished Civilizations*. On a forum, it shows a picture of a mushroom, relating to psychedelics with the thread "lupe fiasco=spiritual warrior." This heads to *The American Genius*' "The real reason AI art tools can't create hands or feet." This leads to matching photos according to finger binary. Heading back to the reviews on Goodreads, it mentions "A classic of conspiracy lunacy..."

They reply to the question, "Lupe Fiasco is known for incorporating complex and often thought-provoking lyrics into his music, and he has certainly touched on esoteric themes in some of his songs. It's up to interpretation whether or not he is specifically "flirting" with esotericism in his lyrics, but it's clear that he has an interest in exploring these kinds of ideas in his music." Opening *The Morning of the Magicians* book, they search for "hands" and carry on to highlight "precious things". Googling "fiasco italian" it shows the article "A taste of Ruffino: the “fiasco” - The Florentine," which carries on in a different article of "Beaver Teeth Bonus: They Don't Stop Growing," with the highlighted text, "This is both a benefit and a burden." The Caesar Cipher is introduced, which goes on to display hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia on Urban Dictionary, followed by the image of a cartoon beaver.

After linking everything up through multiple sources (mainly based on the fan comments and song details), it is evident that Fiasco is trolling, and raises the question of how far people go to confirm their own beliefs and far-fetched theories. Finally, after typing in "72785102064", the UPC Lookup Database for hand sanitizer pops up. The similar UPC numbers display other products, including petroleum jelly, where they highlight the first word. At the very end it asks "Do you find this info accurate?" and they hover over "Hell No."

## Lyrics

**Lyrics**
[Chorus: Nayirah]

These precious things

Oh, these things that we love

Oh, these precious things

How they turn, how they turn

Oh, these precious things

Oh, these things that we love

Oh, these precious things

How they turn, how they turn

On me

[Verse 1: Lupe Fiasco]

Never bite the hands that feed

But when those same hands grab the gats and up the sleeves

They gather traps and apparatus for your grief

They catch you lackin', wrap around yo' hatch and squeeze

I swear my hands were pure, I gave 'em manicures

Became my adversaries, became my saboteurs

I put karats on them just like rabbit lures

My middle finger's like, "Fuck this n\*\*\*a", what happened to us?

Used to be clappin' for us, thumbs up and then snappin' poets

Now they be dappin' fo's and grabbin' Moet

And they know that I don't drink

At least I don't think

I asked for peace signs, they gave me Leon Spinks

I asked for "Okays", I got, "Up yours" and "Go aways"

Shoo gestures and throat slicers, the motion's made

Give me a sign when we can talk through a plan

But my hands was like "Fam, you can talk to the hand," damn

[Chorus: Nayirah]

And these precious things

Oh, these things that we love

Oh, these precious things

How they turn, how they turn

Oh, these precious things

Oh, these things that we love

Oh, these precious things

How they turn, how they turn

On me

[Verse 2: Lupe Fiasco]

Who put the arms in arms?

I put arms in palms

We was hand in hand, Allstate

Pinky speaker, thumb receiver how we used to call make

All shakes

Now it's fingers crossed over small stakes

No taller than the crawl space

Give scissors to my paper, we not on the same page

We was bat, catcher, and pitcher, now you don't even wave

We used to throw the shaka, Honolulu from the stage

Now you just wanna throw hands and technicals on my plays (Goddamn)

[Chorus: Nayirah]

And these precious things (Yeah, yeah)

Oh, these things that we love

Oh, these precious things (These precious little things)

How they turn, how they turn

Oh, these precious things (Yeah, yeah)

Oh, these things that we love

Oh, these precious things

How they turn, how they turn

On me

[Verse 3: Lupe Fiasco]

It's like you coulda did more to try and keep us out them handcuffs

It's like we only matter when fans is putting they hands up

You got popular, treated us like the Yakuza

You was Vampire Hunter D, now you Alucard

See that's the thing 'cause we was praying for you

Air guitar and playing for you

You turned a deaf ear to what we was saying to you

We was here, can't go back to before

The problem is you don't use us to write the raps anymore

[Outro: Nayirah]

Yeah (Yeah)

Precious, precious, precious, precious

Things that we love

They love, they love

Yeah, yeah

Precious things

Love, love

## References

1. ↑ Cummings-Grady, Mackenzie (January 16, 2023). "Lupe Fiasco Explores Fan Conspiracy Theories in Mind-Bending 'Precious Things' Video". *HipHopDX*.