"Yes, yes, yes, guess who's on third/ Lupe still like Lupin the third."
That's Lupe as in Lupe Fiasco a native of Chicago's Westside with endorsements from chart-toppers like Kanye West and Mr. S. Carter himself. Although many know him only as a feature on "Touch the Sky" from Kanye West's "Late Registration," Lupe is a bona fide solo artist in his own right who is poised to make some waves in the hip-hop world.
The Hilltop spoke with Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, better known as Lupe Fiasco, about everything from his style to his upcoming album "Food & Liquor," due out this spring.
The Hilltop: How did you come up with the name "Lupe Fiasco?"
Lupe Fiasco: My name is Wasalu, so I always had "Lu" and I always went with some variation of "Lu," whether it be "Lu-Lu" or "Lu-rical Underdog or somethin'… I picked up the "-pe" from one of my friends I went to high school with the name Lupe. He was real cool, he was this Columbian kid. So I picked up "Lupe" from him and I picked up the "Fiasco" from "The Firm" album. A song called "Firm Fiasco." And I was a real big Nas fan, and you had Nas Escobar, Biggie was Frank White-to me all the best rappers had first and last names. So I picked the "Fiasco" and it became "Lupe Fiasco" and it just stuck since high school.
You said Nas, and others in the Firm were artists you look up to so who are some of your other inspirations?
Mos Def, Pharell, Jay-Z, Spice One, Easy-E, Biggie, Outkast, Jill Scott-it's real varied, real varied, really colorful. Those are some of the main ones. Let me put Ghostface in that list too.
Do you think having such a varied group of people that you look to lends to your more eclectic or different style?
Yeah, of course it would and it's more than that. It goes out into different genres. It goes to writers or poets as opposed to actual musicians or rappers or MCs. So it comes from a lot, it comes from a lot of different places. So yeah when you put all of that into the stew, you come with just, you come out with something. I don't know what to call it. I always try to change up. Like one of my things was I never, ever do the same thing twice. It comes from early on writing raps, I never wanted to say the same metaphor twice, never wanted to use the same riff twice, I never wanted to use the same rhyme scheme or flow pattern, whatever, whatever, so I switched up on every verse so everything else is different. So when it came to this point when I was recording entire songs it went to that too-I never want to talk about the same concept, I never want to do something the same, I always want to do something different. So I had to pull from those different influences and actually combine influences that inspire you to do something different.
A lot of people who aren't into the underground scene, not real hip-hop heads may only know you from the "Touch the Sky" collabo with Kanye so how did that come about?
I've been knowing Kanye for about five years or whatever and we actually worked together prior to "College Dropout" when I was signed to Arista. We had worked on a song together and some other stuff too so it was just natural. You know what I'm sayin'? It wasn't just now that I have a buzz, you know … Lupe, because I had a slight buzz prior to "Touch the Sky." It actually came from the fact that we knew each other, you know what I'm saying. And Ye was like 'I got this record and you're the only person I know that could be better than me on the record would be you." And so there we go we did "Touch the Sky" and it just took off.
So how did the Jay-Z become the executive producer of your album? Was that just a natural thing to or…
Naw, it was more… it was. It stemmed from my partner getting' locked up in the middle of my deal with Arista and Jay-Z steppin' in to kind of fill his shoes. That's the initial point where it came about. I've been knowin' Jay-Z from prior, I wanna say '01, I been knowin' Jay. I was actually gonna sign to Roc-A-Fella for the whole Roc-A-Fella crew. I actually put "What More Can I Say" on the "The Black Album" and did some thing wit' Jay. I performed with him one time for "The Blueprint" tour and it was just like we always had a relationship and it turned into that relationship … and then it just carried over. That position was never taken from him he never wanted not to be executive producer so it just carried over into the Atlantic situation.
In an article in Vibe you are sort of portrayed as the voice of skate culture. How do you feel about that?
I don't think that's true. I think I'm in it and I just speak it, I'm not the voice of it. I don't think the voice of skate culture should be a rapper…skate culture is too varied and wide, like it's art, design, it's toys, it's this, it's whatever. You know? And I don't embody all of those things well enough to be the official spokesperson for skate culture. You know what I'm sayin'. I don't want to be put in that position because I don't want to be looked on as the person that's trying to deliberately commercialize skate culture-simply because it hasn't been talked about and on the level that I'm on in talking about it. I don't wanna be that person. You know? If it happens naturally and organically then cool but I don't look at myself like that.
When I heard the single "Kick Push" I thought there was more to it than the surface story. Is that true?
People think that it's about hustlin' and the pushin'. I think people relate the word "push" to sellin' drugs just because of "The Pusherman" because of Curtis Mayfield. So I think people always wanna equate it with that. And that was a deliberate thing to keep that interest to kinda' create that universality so the common person can find somethin' in the song to relate to even if it's just one word. Then they can let their minds go off with it. But the actual story and the song is really about a skater. It's about the lives of different people and different skaters-some that I know, some that I don't, some that I invented all together in this one person and that's what the story is about-a skater.
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