Lupe Fiasco: Good food and bad liquor

He’s a Muslim, he’s American, and he’s a star – and, remarkably in today’s reactionary climate, no one is questioning his ascendance. That’s Lupe Fiasco, aka Wasalu Jaco, the hottest rapper of 2006. The egalitarian MC is promoting Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor – the ‘food’ signifying the good in life, the ‘liquor’ the bad – which should put him in the same league as his homeboy Kanye West. Mention the hype surrounding his debut and an unassuming Lupe responds, “It isn’t bad.”

Along with Rhymefest, Lupe is ushering in a fresh wave of ‘conscious’ hip hop. Not coincidentally, both hail from Chicago, Common’s home town. Lupe hasn’t risen to the top of the US charts without his share of setbacks. He’s been so close, yet so far successive times. While still at high school, Lupe was a member of Da Pak, down with Epic, but that deal lasted one single. Later the MC was courted by Arista. That too amounted to nothing beyond a promo cut, Pop Pop, due to the sudden departure of LA Reid. Jay-Z also pursued Lupe, but the Chi-towner – now with his own company 1st & 15th – didn’t want to sign to Def Jam outright. Eventually Lupe aligned himself with Atlantic, and the label’s CEO, Craig Kallman – obviously buoyed – has produced a rare track (the sublime Daydreamin’ featuring Jill Scott) for Food & Liquor. Lupe’s album was bootlegged, prompting him to record extra material but, fortunately, this only heightened the buzz. At any rate, Lupe is philosophical, reasoning that after seven years in the game, he’s generated goodwill in the industry, the media and the urban underground. “I had a lotta friends in a lotta high places.”

Lupe has his own theory as to why it’s taken him so long. “I think it was timing,” he starts. “The music industry is pretty saturated, [with party hip hop] kinda reaching its peak, so people were waiting for something a little bit different to what was going on as far as approach and style and even image – just a different person to come out with a different story, because you’ve heard the gangsta story (rattles off the cliches) and then you’ve heard the opposite of it which is, ‘I’m just this conscious dude and I wanna build schools…’ There was something missing from the middle. Even if you look at Kanye, who represents the centre, it’s more flashy, it’s more braggadocio – his persona is a little bit more harsh. So I guess I became the lighthearted hero who struck at the right time – something that people were waiting on.” Lupe is modest about what he’s offering hip hop. “It’s nuthin’ different from anybody else’s as far as content – it’s just the way I do it. I talk about social issues and things that are going on in the world and in the ‘hood, but I talk about it in the form of a giant robot, as opposed to just talking about it flat out.”

Wasalu was raised on the West Side of Chicago, ‘the hood’, the youngest of nine sons to progressive parents. Lupe’s father is a drummer, knowledgeable about African percussion, and his mother a chef. In fact, it was Dad who introduced Wasulu to hip hop, cranking up NWA in the ride. Initially the youngster wasn’t feeling it – he considered the language crass and perhaps confronting. “That’s why it was so vulgar,” he says. “He did it to make people mad – like he listened to NWA and then he listened to Public Enemy and I remember he played it real loud. He worked in this corporate business suit part of town, and he would drive fast banging it, just to make those people mad.” To this day, when chilling, the MC vibes to jazz. But, by his late teens, Lupe, having overcome his disdain for hip hop, was rapping. His father was concerned when Wasulu announced his intention to enter music, but was subsequently convinced by his professionalism. “My mother, she’s just super excited,” Lupe says. “She tells any and everybody. She knows more about what I’m doing than I do!”

The biggest surprise of Food & Liquor is that Jay-Z, the ultimate playa, serves as an executive producer (and raps). Lupe cites Jay-Z as his “favourite rapper” and reveals that Jigga instilled in him a greater self-belief – advising Lupe to never compromise. “He told me, Don’t chase radio… When everybody else is doing this, do this. You’ve heard it from other people, but to hear it coming from somebody like Jay-Z, it’s different, it was even more of a push, more of a motivation – like, Yeah, OK, that’s what I’ma do.” Lupe also collaborates with lesser known beatmakers, as well as some of the scene’s bigger names. Kanye contributes a song – no doubt in return for Lupe’s inspired cameo on Touch The Sky. (Lupe also disseminated a version of Jesus Walks entitled Muhammad Walks on his first mixtape). Some fans speculated that Kanye nicked the theme from Lupe’s early Conflict Diamonds for Diamonds From Sierra Leone, yet Lupe attributes it to coincidence. Aside from Kanye, Pharrell Williams produces I Gotcha. And, strangely, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda oversees The Instrumental, which is subliminal rock.

Lupe, like Jay-Z, is inherently musical. Food & Liquor has a continuity hip hop albums invariably lack. “I’m a big fan of movies,” Lupe enthuses. “I just love dramatic, grandiose production. Whenever I hear a beat or get to write a song, I do it visually – so I see the visuals, I see Doctor Zhivago, the train scene with him, or I see the explosion at the end of Die Hard, or something like that. I always see that in pictures, like grandiose events going off, and I try and make the song match that. A lot of the time I just let the producer do something and they’ll bring it to me and I’ll be like, ‘Yo, that’s fresh.’ Some of the songs it was like, ‘I want it to sound like this and I want this particular sound.’ Then other people I just went out to because I wanted their sound, like Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park – I wanted that Linkin Park kinda rock but New Age, futuristic hip hop sound and so I went to them for that. Some of it was pretty deliberate, a lot of it was just as it came – you just hit it one beat and, Oh, that’s fresh, Ima use that!”

On Food & Liquor Lupe challenges hip hop to transcend its preoccupation with bling-bling. Not that he’s didactic – the rapper revels in his “nerd” persona. Lupe’s lead single Kick, Push, about skateboarding, is playful as he channels his inner-teen – it’s something Pharrell might do. Lupe is more serious on the LP’s stand-out, American Terrorist, its lyricism recalling Nas at his most elevated. The MC sought to outline “a brief history – not the history, but a history – of terrorism in America.” Lupe references the genocide of Native Americans, slavery and the legacy of racism. “I wanted to touch on a lot of different things that happened in America because Americans don’t think that there are American terrorists. What they do to other countries isn’t considered terrorism and what they do to their own citizens isn’t considered terrorism. It’s considered a ‘pre-emptive strike’ or ‘democracy’, but it’s really like, No, that’s using the same tactics that a terrorist would use.”

Lupe is at ease in discussing his faith, which means he doesn’t drink, but he isn’t aspiring to be a spokesman for Islam. He doesn’t feel worthy of it. “I’m not trying to show anything. When I say that I’m not trying to be the poster boy for Islam, I don’t wanna be that because, as a Muslim, I don’t want other people who are not Muslim to look at my flaws and then start to use that as weapons against Muslims or even more as evidence or an excuse to carry on with the prejudice, or just push people away from Islam. I don’t want people to look at Lupe Fiasco and go, ‘Well, Lupe Fiasco, he didn’t pray five times today’, or, ‘Lupe Fiasco, he didn’t fast the first week of Ramadan’, because you’ll never be able to get the reasons out, it’ll just be what happened, and people will use that as weapons, and I don’t want that to happen.” That’s increasingly unlikely – Lupe manifests positivity. He will open minds. And there’s more auspicious news. Australia will soon get the chance to experience Lupe live. He’s been confirmed for the Big Day Out…

‘Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor’ is out through Warner and he tours the country on the Big Day Out this summer:

Sun Jan 21 – Big Day Out, Gold Coast
Tue Jan 23 – The Metro, Sydney
Thu Jan 25 – Big Day Out, Sydney
Fri Jan 26 – Prince of Wales, Melbourne
Sun Jan 28 – Big Day Out, Melbourne
Fri Feb 2 – Big Day Out, Adelaide
Sun Feb 4 – Big Day Out, Perth

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