Pitchfork

***Pitchfork*** (formerly ***Pitchfork Media***) is an American online music publication that was launched in 1995 by writer Ryan Schreiber as an independent music blog. They have reviewed all eight studio albums by American rapper Lupe Fiasco.

Writer and journalist Juan Vidal called Fiasco "essential," and continued, "has given voice to some of the more pressing matters of our time." Through the rapper's vocalness not only in his music but through his platform, Vidal applied the label of "self-actualized." The *Pitchfork* contributor concluded, "The problem is denying Lupe a seat at the table because he speaks with so much fire on his tongue."

## Interview

Lupe Fiasco is a study in contradictions. He's steeped in nerd-rap signifiers (a debut single about skateboarding, a mixtape where he raps over Gorillaz tracks), but he comes heavily touted by commercial rap heavyweights like Jay-Z and Twista. He's a dazzlingly fluid rapper, crazy at complicated internal rhymes, but he claims that he doesn't even like rap that much. And he's a proud practicing Muslim, but his lyrics are more about wide-eyed humanism than tangled Five-Percenter rhetoric or militaristic lockstep. An incomplete version of *Food and Liquor*, his debut album, leaked to the internet, and as it stands it's one of the great rap albums of the year-- a warm, humane, virtuosic meditation on growing up smart and poor and black and confused. Lupe says it's virtually nothing like the finished version. Shortly after the album leaked, Pitchfork spoke with Lupe about internet forums, Chinese farmers, and Ice Cube.

**Pitchfork**: What did you mean when you said you own Pitchfork?

Lupe Fiasco: People see your reviews sometimes, and it's so good that they think I wrote it. And I'm like, "OK, yeah, I wrote it. And I own the company that put it out."

**Pitchfork**: So you were happy to see the review of your mixtapes, then?

LF: Yeah! I really feel like you got what I was doing with that.

**Pitchfork**: So are you sick of talking about the leak yet?

LF: No, it's whatever now.

**Pitchfork**: Everybody's heard it?

LF: That's the thing, though. We on the internet. That's such a small community. We think we're so huge. If you went up to people on the street and asked them about it, they'd probably be like, "You had a album coming out?" Let alone it leaked. I only made one statement about it, and that was the statement where I was like, "Yo, this is some BS, the whole situation." So I only did one statement, and then I never talked about it again. I went back and told kids that the album was still coming out June 27.

**Pitchfork**: But the statement I saw on Allhiphop.com, you seemed stressed about it.

LF: No, that's the same statement. They took pieces from the statement that I originally posted on Okayplayer.com. Kids started taking pieces of it and posting it. So it was the same statement, and I really just go by the feedback that the statement got on Okayplayer. That's really the only hip-hop forum that I go to and chill on.

Kids on other things were like, "Oh, your album sucks!" I don't care! You know what I'm saying? Like, do you have Madvillainy or not? But on Okayplayer, it's other artists, and they don't really hide that they're other artists. Like Phonte from Little Brother, he'd be responding like, "Yo, keep your head up; it's great to hear that you're still rocking with this." But you go to other sites, people are like, "Stop bitching, Lupe." Whatever. Shock value is shock value; I'm just happy it got people talking.

People are saying I did it on purpose or that the company did it. I didn't do it; if I did, I would've gotten the names of the songs right. I would've named the producers. If the company did it, the company's getting sued. I hope they didn't do it. That's sabotage. The kids who got it who were my fans didn't even know. They were like, "The leak is fresh, man." Whoever put it out as an advance, like it was supposed to be some official advance version of the album--two-and-a-half months before the album comes out? I mean, come on. I knew the album was going to leak. I just hoped it would be closer to when the album actually came out.

**Pitchfork**: How close is the leak to what's coming out?

LF: About 50%, 45% even.

**Pitchfork**: It's funny; the leak actually holds together beautifully as an album.

LF: No skits, no interludes.

**Pitchfork**: So you're going to throw some skits on?

LF: When I say skits, I mean like glue to weave the songs together, so it's not just like one song to another song to another song, so it flows. There's still some guest MCs I want on there that aren't really full-on guest MCs, just little accents for the songs. And there's songs on [the leak] that I leaked years ago, almost, that weren't even going to make the album. The kids got about six solid songs that are going to be on the album. We didn't even have the tracklisting yet for what we were going to put out.

There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes. That's why the mixtapes from Fahrenheit 1/15 to Revenge of the Nerds to Rhyming Ape got, not watered down, but weaker.

**Pitchfork**: You think so?

LF: Yeah, they get weaker. And I did that intentionally. I didn't even write *Revenge of the Nerds*. I didn't even write a rhyme down. I just went in there and started freestyling. It's a few songs that I did intensely; you gotta have a few. But if you listen to the mixtape, I even make a statement; it's like, "I don't want to spoil y'all, so I'm a fall back a little." Even with *Rhyming Ape*, I didn't even want to do a full mixtape; I just wanted to do something conceptual, take these Gorillaz records and put them together, get something that's 15 minutes long, and go. It's more about marketing and stuff like that, shocking people. The Gorillaz really appreciated that when I had a chance to play it for them in London, like, "Oh, I wish we'd used that here." So I'm really conscious when I'm sitting down and writing my album.

**Pitchfork**: One of the things I wanted to ask you about was the way you talk about politics. Usually when people talk about politics in rap now, like with Dead Prez or whatever, it's very concrete with absolutely no room for ambiguity. It's almost too clear exactly what they mean. But your stuff is a lot looser, more based in imagery, kind of impressionistic. Tell me about how you approached that.

LF: To me, you can't win. You can't win. There's a war in Iraq; there's no way that they're ending that. The war in Afghanistan is still going on. There's no way that's going to end anytime soon. You can complain about it, you can throw rocks at it, but you really have to come to the conclusion that this is a really twisted place sometimes and some stuff you're not going to win.

It's not designed for you to win; it's designed to be played. It's designed for you to play your position until a certain point, when you get a chance to actually do some good, make a statement, get on your soapbox and say something. But you gotta be really careful because people like to create their own instances, like "Now it's time for me to say something because I got this album out." It's like, don't nobody care. George Bush is not going to hear you. Congress is not going to hear what you're saying. The only time they'll hear you is if you're there at a Congressional hearing and they give you an hour and it's being simulcast on NPR and CNN. Other than that, your rap record ain't getting too far.

It's one thing to inspire, and it's levels of change. Like, who are you really informing? Who are you talking to? Because if you're talking to they hood, you're talking over them; they don't understand what you're saying. And it's not a black vs. white thing. America is not all white people. It's not all black people. It's not all Mexican people. We together, and we all relate on certain levels, so if you actually scaring people away, they can't relate to what you're saying. So my approach is I put God first; I say "God willing" all the time. The only way things will change is with God. So knowing that I can't really change anything, I'm just going to satire it. I'm going to make my message, I'm going to put my message in such a palatable format that you won't even know what I'm talking about until it hits you. And they're going to listen to it. Politicians listen to my records.

**Pitchfork**: Really?

LF: Yeah, I've got a lot of friends in politics that listen to my records, listen to "Muhammad Walks". And it's not threatening, but it's the truth. I have preachers who will speak in their churches, speak statements and lines from "Muhammad Walks" to their congregation. And I have people who want to pull me into specific projects in the community based on my music and on the mixtapes. It's like, it's the truth but I'm not trying to preach to you. Because who am I to say what's really right or wrong, or whether [what I say] is going to change anything? I don't take it too seriously; it's really whimsical.

On the leak, there's a song where I compare the war in Iraq to prostitution. The first two verses are about a kid who finds a girl at McDonald's and he's pimping her. And the whole song is about straight politics, but you don't even know. You're listening, like, "OK, he's talking about a girl, he's talking about a boy," and then here comes this whole dissertation on Iraq, how it relates to prostitution. It's like, "Oh, so it's not all 'Kick Push'? It's not all happy skateboarding?" It's the way you package it.

But I don't expect to be the political savior of the downtrodden and the poor. A lot of the battles people are trying to fight, people that are in that situation are oblivious to it. China is soon to be probably the most powerful nation in the world, but they only making like $10,000 a year, and that's doing it. They're balling on $10,000 a year, and this is the strongest nation? But it's a billion people. The way it breaks down, if you really look at it, it's still built on the poor, on the backs of hundreds of millions of destitute, impoverished farmers that you'll never see. You just see Shanghai and you see Hong Kong.

**Pitchfork**: On a smaller level, you've got one song where you're talking about how you didn't like rap, you didn't like that women were degraded, but you liked Too Short, and you'd quote the lyrics back but take out the word bitch. That's something that just about everyone I know who likes rap has done. That's something that I still do, but I've never heard anyone talk about that in a song before.

LF: People have their morals, but morals aren't concrete. People think because I'm a Muslim that I pray five times a day, but you're never going to see that on a day-to-day basis. People fluctuate. To me, that was the most specific way to put it, the best way to be like, "I listen to this music, but it's the most violent music on the planet." But I like it, and to make up for it, I don't say the cuss words. That's how I get away with it. People are hypocritical. That's just human nature. I embrace my hypocrisy. Once you come to grips with who you are and what's in you, and you aren't ashamed of it...[but] people are made to feel ashamed. You start thinking, like, "Is this human nature? That I like certain things, but I don't like certain aspects of certain things? Should I just shun it altogether?"

I don't like to degrade women, but I like pornography. So what is that? It's weird, the stuff that we do. You see it everywhere; it's not just here. I have a friend from Pakistan; Pakistan is a Muslim country. And he is mad at America, everything that's going on in it, chant down Babylon. But he'll also say, "I would never raise my kids in Pakistan." It's like, what? You'd raise them here? Pakistan is a Muslim country, what's going on? And he'll say, "Yes, but you can't open a business unless you give someone a bribe. You gotta worry about people coming in and buying your daughter, worry about the people who are going to come in and try to marry your daughter." So you have this weird juxtaposition of good and bad. That's why I named my album Food & Liquor, because it's a mix; everything's not always what it seems. I really embrace that. I embrace that because after I do that, I can move on; I can try and go away from that. You gotta understand what your problem is and know what it is, and then you can change it. You can't just be like, "I'm a hypocrite, and to not be a hypocrite, I'm just going to not do hypocritical things." You can't do that; you don't even understand what a hypocrite is.

**Pitchfork**: That embracing the hypocrisy thing, that's something that's been around in rap pretty much since rap existed; you definitely hear it in Jay-Z all the time. And now that you're contemporaries with Too Short, have you had interactions with these guys?

LF: I've had interactions, but it's more cordial. You just be like, "Hey, what's up?" It ain't like, "Hey Ice Cube, when you made 'A Bitch Iz a Bitch', when I was eight years old, that's all I listened to, and I really think that that's probably now why I can't trust women.'" It really doesn't go down like that; you just say, "Hey, what's up?" I guess as it goes on, it'll probably be addressed. Records really affect people like that, to the point where me and my friends would ride around, and "A Bitch Iz a Bitch" would come on, and we'd be like, "Yo! This song's hot! This is why I don't trust women!" I had that epiphany two months ago; I was going around bumping N.W.A, and I was like, this is why I don't trust women, why I be really weird about approaching women! Because I don't know if I can trust them, because Ice Cube told me when I was eight that they're skeezers and I can't trust them! Not all women, some women, but you don't know who those are. So this opened the door for that distrust.

**Pitchfork**: But you can't just go up to Ice Cube and say that.

LF: No, you can't do that. And I don't think it's intentional; I just think it's one of those things. I can pull from anything. I can pull from cartoons, like this is why I'm desensitized to violence and why I don't mind hitting this man in the head with a frying pan. You can get that with a lot of stuff; that was just one instance in particular. Listening to this song 18 years later, it's like "Oh! that's why!" So nurture really has a play in it. Nature only goes so far. Nurture, what you raised on and what you ingest as a youngster, it really affects you when you grow up in really subtle, long drawn-out ways. And to find that, to hear that thing again all those years later and to realize that was the source, it's like, "What else has me twisted?" So now I'm going back to robots and cartoons; I go back to all this to see what got me the way that I am.

**Pitchfork**: I read this interview with David Banner a year ago where he was saying that Southern rap sounds different from New York rap because people listen to it in cars. That's how they experience it, so the levels of bass matters. The version of your album that leaked is the first rap album I've heard that I would call an iPod album. The way it sounds, it seems more geared toward close listening, and sound-wise it's soothing in these weird and interesting ways. It's more intimate, the way you use your voice on the beats and the kinds of beats that you use.

LF: Well, when I write, it's intimate. I write in the car, and I don't even hear, like, ambulances driving past me because I'm in my car, listening to the music, writing. I record in an attic with no booth. It's not like I'm in the dark with candles, but it's like a house, a home, and I record like that. I think that plays into the music. I always want landscapes that are not too, like, warrrrng! The stuff that I make and the things that I talk about, you have to listen, so if the beat is doing too much, it's going to take you away. If the hook is too distracting, it's going to take you away. The hook just needs to be enough to get you from one verse to the next. And they actually mixed my album with the beat all the way in the back.

But the music is in the back and the vocals are on top because it's listening music. Like, I love jazz. So to me, there are two main types of jazz. There's dancing jazz, and then there's listening jazz. Listening jazz is like Thelonius Monk or John Coltrane, where it's a listening experience. So that's what I like; I like to make stuff that you listen to. It's not really meant to get you up; it's meant to get your mind focused. That's why you sit and listen to jazz. You dance to big band or whatever, but for the most part, you sit and listen to jazz. I think it comes from that aesthetic, trying to take that jazz listening experience and put it on hip-hop. I really don't like hip-hop like that, that much. So I can strip down basic principles of certain things and apply it to everything else. And that keeps you interested, changing the art form, making it more avant-garde. Because I can't play any instruments.

## References

1. ↑ Vidal, Juan (February 4, 2015). "Lupe Fiasco Is Not Crazy". *Pitchfork*.
2. ↑ Breihan, Tom (May 14, 2006). "Lupe Fiasco". *Pitchfork*.
3. ↑ Fennessey, Sean (February 5, 2006). "*Fahrenheit 1/15*". *Pitchfork*.
4. ↑ Fennessey, Sean (September 21, 2006). "*Food & Liquor*". *Pitchfork*.
5. ↑ Pytlik, Mark (January 8, 2008). "*The Cool*". *Pitchfork*.
6. ↑ Cohen, Ian (January 6, 2010). "*Enemy of the State: A Love Story*". *Pitchfork*.
7. ↑ Cohen, Ian (March 16, 2011). "*Lasers*". *Pitchfork*.
8. ↑ Greene, Jayson (January 18, 2012). "*Friend of the People*. *Pitchfork*.
9. ↑ Greene, Jayson (September 27, 2012). "*Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1*". *Pitchfork*.
10. ↑ Greene, Jayson (January 22, 2015). "*Tetsuo & Youth*". *Pitchfork*.
11. ↑ Houghton, Edwin (February 14, 2017). "*DROGAS Light*". *Pitchfork*.
12. ↑ Josephs, Brian (September 29, 2018). "*Drogas Wave*". *Pitchfork*.
13. ↑ Berry, Peter (July 7, 2022). "*Drill Music in Zion*". *Pitchfork*.
14. ↑ Schreiber, Ryan (December 14, 2006). "Top 25 Worst Album Covers of 2006". *Pitchfork*.
15. ↑ "Best of 2006". *Pitchfork*. December 14, 2006.
16. ↑ "The Top 100 Tracks of 2006". *Pitchfork*. December 18, 2006.
17. ↑ "Top 50 Albums of 2006". *Pitchfork*. December 19, 2006.