Teen Vogue

***Teen Vogue*** is an American online publication launched in January 2003, as a sister publication to *Vogue*, targeted at teenage girls and young women. They interviewed American rapper Lupe Fiasco for their May 2011 issue. He talked about his third studio album, *Lasers*.

## Article

**Jane Keltner de Valle:** This album has been a long time coming for you. How do you think you've grown and evolved as an artist and a person since the last one?

**Lupe Fiasco:** This album has been an emotional rollercoaster. You can go on vacation, you can try to fall in love a few times—you can do anything to try and block yourself from it—and one of the things that I developed over time was just to become numb to it. At a certain level it goes beyond the actual act of making music, to the business of the music, which becomes a whole other monster, especially if you've reached a certain level of success, because then there's a certain level of expectation. [But] I've gotten way stronger and more in touch with the things I really love about doing music, which is performing. People always say that when you get a job, you should get something that you love to do. That way if you're rich or broke, every day you wake up you'll be going to do something you love.

**Jane Keltner de Valle:** Did the problems you had with your record label inspire you as an artist?

**Lupe Fiasco:** Yeah, definitely. Like the first verse of "The Show Goes On."

**Jane Keltner de Valle:** I was going to say, it sounds a little like an F-you to your label.

**Lupe Fiasco:** [Laughs] Yeah, yeah. And it reaches all the way back in time twenty years ago to the end of the Sex Pistols: Johnny Rotten on stage in San Francisco saying, 'Have you ever had this feeling that you was being cheated?' and throwing the mike down. Whatever he was going through with that particular situation, with the label, with the management—he was like, I'm done with this. So it's that same energy. There's a lot of moments on the album that document what was going on, to give people an explanation of why.

**Jane Keltner de Valle:** What role did the fans have in getting this album out?

**Lupe Fiasco:** Oh, this is their album. I was at that stage where I didn't really care if the album came out or not, and to see people physically put themselves on the line and sacrifice their own day at work or school to come out and protest for Lupe Fiasco, that inspired me to care. And not really about the album coming out and what's gonna sell or the record label, but about the fans—that they get something they can be proud of and enjoy. So this is the people's album.

**Jane Keltner de Valle:** What artists from the history of hip hop, or even outside of hip hop, do you admire and respect?

**Lupe Fiasco:** Kid Cudi, Bob Marley and even Damian Marley, Ian Curtis from Joy Division, and, honestly, people like Madonna, simply because she has balls. She's constantly reinventing herself. That's what inspires me, to see people who are brave, who live their music, and not only that, but who are talented and have a certain degree of quality and seriousness when they approach the creation, production, and execution of their music.

**Jane Keltner de Valle:** You've said hip hop artists today aren't creative or revolutionary enough. What do you think is lacking in hip hop today?

**Lupe Fiasco:** Well, I think the music is great. It's a subjective critique. I can't point to something specific, but the one thing I can say is that there's a certain feedback group. You'll go to the club, and the music all sounds the same. It's the same producer who did the same top four records, and it's the same person on the hook, and they're talking about the same thing, and they're all rapping the same way. Even the majority of the lyrics and the message are the same. 'I fell in love with a girl.' Which isn't that bad, but it's like, 'I fell in love with six girls, and I fell in love with them at the club.' It's just that lack of conceptualization. And I'm talking mainstream. I'm not talking about the dudes in the trenches and the underground cats. I'm talking about the field where I play. I play with the majors. And in the majors, it's the same stuff.

**Jane Keltner de Valle:** You address a lot of political and social issues in the new album, especially the song "Words I Never Said." What messages do you hope will come through?

**Lupe Fiasco:** As far as "Words I Never Said," for me it was about giving the album teeth, giving it a certain amount of substance. Really, it's nothing new for me. My first album had a song called "American Terrorist," which compared the modern terrorist acts of extremist Christian organizations to the terrorist acts of Islamic Fundamentalists. And this was in 2006. So this album is actually a little tamer in that sense, but it's way more direct. And I think the timing of it, and the idea that me as a black man in America would critique the first black president in America rubs people like, oh really? But at the end of the day, for me, it's about being honest. I'll turn on the TV, and the same way that Bush would say something and I would turn the TV off, Obama will say something and I'll turn the TV off.

**Jane Keltner de Valle:** If you had fifteen minutes alone with Obama, what would you say to him?

**Lupe Fiasco:** Probably nothing, to be honest. I got a chance to see him right before he became president elect. We were all in Chicago, and we were playing basketball at the same gym. It was super high security. It was probably no more than twenty people in the gym. And I remember the people I came with wanted to take pictures. They were like, that's gonna be the president. And they were shaking his hand. And I remember thinking, I'm not going to shake his hand because I don't know what he's going to do. It's not about the rhetoric and empty statements and change and hope. What is that? What does that mean? I'm at the point now where I'm like, what are you going to do to change the economic and foreign policies of the United States of America? What are we going to do to show solidarity with the oppression and suffering of people. What are you going to do with that? And I remember not shaking his hand because I did not know what he was going to do. So I honestly don't know what I would say. I probably wouldn't say anything. I probably wouldn't go, to be honest.

**Jane Keltner de Valle:** You talk a lot about action in the new album. Do you believe that an album or an artist can affect political or social change today?

**Lupe Fiasco:** I definitely think they can inform. Whereas rock is a little more metaphoric, hip hop is direct. Hip hop tells it like it is. And it's like, What do you want to say? So in that way, it has the potential to be something that inspires one person to act. But I don't think it's the end all, be all. Like how people are giving a lot of kudos to Twitter and Facebook for the revolution or what have you. You have to remind yourself that people have been having revolutions without Twitter for thousands of years. They were connecting and organizing before there were even telephones. You think of things like the French Resistance during the Nazi era or the Million Man March in the United States, and there wasn't Twitter or Facebook or anything like that.

**Jane Keltner de Valle:** What are you most proud of with respect to the new album?

**Lupe Fiasco:** "All Black Everything" is my favorite song on the album. The track, the lyrics—and it's not one of those things where it's my favorite song because I know everyone else is going to like it. Even if nobody else heard it and it was just something I kept to myself, it would still be my favorite song. Same way that pineapples are my favorite food, whether you like pineapples or not.

**Jane Keltner de Valle:** What's next for Lupe Fiasco?

**Lupe Fiasco:** The album, and hopefully some touring. For this next cycle, I just want to put out a bunch of music. Hopefully by the end of the year, you'll have another Lupe Fiasco album. Then in the midst of that, I have my punk band Japanese Cartoon. We're trying to put out another album by the end of the summer. So it's really just about music, music, music.

## References

1. ↑ De Valle, Jane (June 27, 2012). "Lupe Fiasco Interview". *Teen Vogue*.