Pound

***Pound*** was a Toronto-based hip hop magazine that was distributed for free across Canada. Lupe Fiasco was featured in Issue #34, published in August 2006. The first interview was written by Luke Fox, with the second interview done by Andrea Woo.

## Article

**Too Much Information**
*By Luke Fox*
"I want people that put fear in my heart, that scare me," says Kanye West, regarding his decision to put a little-known rapper named Lupe Fiasco on his "Touch the Sky" single. Fiasco spat a freestyle over the "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" beat that frightened the producer into rhyming alongside his fellow Chicagoan. "Lupe is so ill that me and Jay had to tell him to hold back a little, don't give 'em too much information."

In two separate conversations with *Pound* [See sidebar], the new fly guy with glasses (word to Extra P) doles out information like an Ivy League professor.

**Two nights ago, Jay-Z was asked in an interview to name one person who was moving the game forward, and he named you. He said you're making the most creative hip-hop music right now. How does that compliment like that make you feel?**
Well, I've been hearing that from Jay for years. So for him to say it publicly, it really doesn't sway me in any direction. He's been saying that for years. It's good, it's good. I look at it like, I hope it pushes [my album] a bit more. I've been hearing that for so long from him, so it's like, Oh, OK.

**When was the first time you met him?**
I met Jay in 2001. I was actually supposed to sign to Roc-A-Fella. It was a situation where I didn't sign because I had my own company [First and Fifteenth]. And he actually came on as executive producer [of my album] in 2003, and the first comment he made was in *The Source*. So my first piece of publicity was a co-signature from Jay-Z.

**You've been quoted as saying that you love jazz more than hip-hop. How come?**
Jazz has more depth in certain areas. The fact that it's not a talking music—and I'm talking about instrumental jazz as opposed to jazz singing. I grew up listening to jazz. I didn't grow up listening to hip-hop. I actually grew up listening to classical music and rock 'n' roll and stuff. I became a fan of hip-hop in eighth grade, so I had a whole experience of being a little kid, all the way up to adolescence and preteen, listening to jazz, being a fan of jazz. Billie Holliday, Cab Calloway, Miles Davis. It just has more of an appeal to me. I love the period of time when jazz was big, in the '20s and '30s. So I'm just a fan of that whole movement more than I am of hip-hop. I sit down and study hip-hop, I do hip-hop. I did that whole experience in high school, but jazz always reigns supreme. When I leave a show—leave one of my shows, leave somebody else's shows—I ask my driver to turn on some jazz, and I jazz my way all the way home. Not that it's musically superior or anything like that, but in a lot of instance it is. It just has more depth to me.

**Did you ever pick up any instruments?**
Inspired by Benny Goodman, I tried to play the clarinet at one point, and it was a complete disaster.

**When did you discover that you had a knack for putting words together?**
I always used to write stories. As a little kid, I used to tell stories to my friends in grade school. I remember we used to go on field trips, and my friends would want me to tell them stories, so I would tell them stories. They weren't rhyming or nothing like that, just stories. So I always had this knack to put words together. I'm a horrible mathematician, but I always was good with words. I can shape words and change words, make them do different things, say them in different ways. So I took that aesthetic to hip-hop when I started writing my own rhymes. I guess I was just good at it. My friends had this epiphany one day: They just looked at me like, "Yo, you're good." I was like, "You know what? I think I am. Am I? I'm good?" That was like mid-high school, maybe junior year.

**After seven years of rapping, your debut album gets leaked. Granted, you have mixtapes, but you still haven't released a proper project. Do you get frustrated?**
No. Everything happens for a reason; everything has a space in time. And now it's to the point where it doesn't even matter. If the album never comes out, I'll still be comfortable and happy because I've done so much in the music industry. I've won a Grammy. I had the whole phase where I was flooded in diamonds. Everything that comes with being a rapper, or being in the music business, to a certain extent I've had—and gave away or lost. I got my own shoe before my album came out. So I'm getting all these rewards prior to having an album out. These are the things you would normally look forward to after an album comes out, so to get all that stuff before, you just be like, Oh, OK, so what am I gonna do when the album comes out? I'm already doing it. If you compare my situation to this rapper or that rapper, it's like, ah, man, I'm straight.

**What's the significance of 1st and 15th?**
First and fifteenth is the days of the month that people get their welfare cheques.

**Why did you take that name for your company?**
Because it represents the struggle. I was one of those kids who, on the first and fifteenth, got a big ol' stack of brown stamps and was excited: "Yeah! We goin' shopping and gettin' some clothes!" It was like a ghetto holiday. Even to this day, you'll have people like, "I can't wait till the first, 'cause on the first I'm-a get some shoes."

**When you were on welfare as a kid, did you always feel like that situation was only temporary?**
I didn't really care about material stuff like that. It really had no bearing on me because I was too young to understand really what the world was about or what was going on. So for me, it was like, "Oh, more candy! Yay, candy!" I didn't get materialistic until high school, when it really became important and people actually started talking about you because you had certain things.

**Your flow is casual and conversational, but lyrically there's a lot of intricate wordplay going on. Do people underestimate your skills because you don't use an in-your-face approach?**
That's the point, though. That's part of my whole thing. I love jazz because it's simple as far as what it takes to make it. A trio—a piano, a drum and bass—is just three instruments. But the soundscapes they create with these three instruments is so complex and has so much depth and so many levels and layers... I love that. I love that simple complexity. So I love when, on the outside, my records are just a whitewash of simpleness, where people be like, "Ah, he ain't talkin' about nothing." Then they'll hear a metaphor, and there's five different meanings to that one metaphor. I have kids now that break down lyrics from records that I wrote four years ago, on the website forums. One kid will put what he thinks one line means, and then somebody will come behind him and say, "Yeah, but it also means this..." and somebody will come behind like, "Oh, well, it also means this..." and that's just lines, and it's six minutes long. I love that. I love being unassuming and underestimated. That was one of my rap names; one of my old rap names was Lyrical Underdog. I love being the underdog, looked over, behind the scenes, then I come break yo ass.

**How much time do you invest in one verse?**
Sometimes it takes all day; sometimes it's off the cuff. It depends on how I feel. you heard of the movie *The Last Dragon*? Remember how they had "The Glow?" I have these moments where it's like a warmth comes over me, and it's just easy. If I try to write a rap and I feel cold, it might take more time. It's really weird. I have this warm adrenaline rush that I get—but it's not like active, wildin' out; it's like, in my mind, the synapses are firing at a million times a second, and it just comes easy. But sometimes, on purpose, because you learn something new every day, I'll write half a verse and then wait a whole day until I leaern something new. Then go back and put what I learned that day into that verse. You always see something different when you step back and come back to it. So sometimes I take a long time to write, even two days for one verse. Even though I could do it in 10 seconds.

**Explain the line "Money talks in another kind of slang."**
The line is "I bumped into a bum and covered mine in shame—I tucked my chain in," which I really did. I remember walking down the street and I had on all my chains and shit, and I tucked 'em in 'cause I seen this homeless person and I felt ashamed. And then the contradiction and the duality of it was, later on that day, I seen some girls, and I took my chain out to impress the girls. So, it's kinda that duality of money—and diamonds represent money, of course. Money can mean two different things; it's strange. It's not just like you pay for things with it and that's it. It has different voices when it talks.

**No-Show: Lupe Limps Live**
*By Andrea Woo*
There were a number of reasons why Matt Dowell wanted to see Lupe Fiasco perform. For one thing, the Californian and his freinds were feeling Lupe's series of *Fahrenheit 1/15 mixtapes, as well as the leak of his then-unreleased album,* Food & Liquor*. "I also wanted to go because Lupe always came off like a real cool, appreciative type of dude, even with the major buzz around him," adds the 26-year-old marketing analyst. "Someone who deserves support."*

So in late May, when Lupe hit San Francisco on the western leg of his promotional tour, Dowell and his friends headed out. Though doors opened at nine and the Chicago emcee didn't take the stage until half-past-midnight—a smidgen late even by rap show standards—Dowell says the crowd of roughly 200 was hype.

After the obligatory greetings and plugs for his label, 1st and 15th, Lupe launched into his verse from Kanye West's "Touch the Sky.." This was followed by "Conflict Diamonds"—his take on Kanye's "Diamonds from Sierra Leone"—and then "Kick Push," arguably his most well-known song to date.

"Everyone went ape shit," recalls Dowell. "The ["Kick Push"] beat went off and on, off and on, and he was teasing the crowd with it. People were getting more juiced before he fully went into the song, and then everyone was singing along. This is when I thought we were gonna be in for a hell of a show."

After the fourth song of the night—"Tilted," over the beat to Crucial Conflict's "Hay"—Lupe did something that the crowd most likely did not expect; with a "Thanks, San Francisco," and a requisite "Peace," the man Dowell now dubs Lupe Fleeasco walked off the stage.

"Everyone just stood there for about two minutes or so, then the lights came on," says Dowell. "Everyone was like 'Huh? Guess it's done," and just turned around and walked out. It was almost surreal."

Others agree. "Lupe was only onstage for a total of 15 minutes, at most," says Steve K., who drove two hours from Sacramento to see the show. "I was pretty fucked up when I was leaving the place, but it seemed like the consensus from everyone I walked by was, 'What the fuck did we just pay for?'"

While some may attribute Lupe's short performance to a case of premature superstar syndrome, that's no quite it. Rather, the man that *Vibe* called "potentially the leader of rap's new school" feels he has already conquered enough of the rap's rugged terrain. Instead of pursuing higher plateaus, the 24-year old would rather change course.

"I'm more focused on my design, and the fashion stuff that I be doing, than I am into hio-hop," says the man born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco. "I just do hip-hop now just to do it. It's like my love, now, is somewhere else. Not really fully on, but the music business of hip-hop? I lost the love for that a long time ago. But I still write, and the whole thing, just to entertain myself. Now, it's more the fashion and stuff."

He is referring primarily to Righteous Kung Fu, the streetwear and design company that he owns. Aside from that, Lupe also recently signed a deal with Reebok to design his own shoe and even got an offer to design snowboards. It is in these ventures where his heart lies nowadays, despite finding enviable success as what MTV called a "lyrical prodigy."

"I don't really rock with hip-hop too much, even though I do it and I 've been a fan of it," he continues. "I've been in it for so long—I've been in it half my life—so now, it's just kind of like, whatever."