Originally published in Verbicide issue #18

Some say the lyrical wordplay that defined East Coast hip-hop is no longer in demand. Witness the ascension of the South, where dope beats and raw vibes take precedence over complex rhymes and intricate cadences. Cool, but is there any place left for wordplay? For Lupe’s sake, we should hope so.

Lupe Fiasco, born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, grew up in Chicago and represents it well. You can hear the Chi in everything he does. Think Common, Kanye, Rhymefest, and so on. The “everyday man” themes are there. The sometimes introspective, sometimes boastful lyrics. The lush strings and nostalgic samples over No ID and J Dilla-esque beats.

His story is anything but straightforward. Lupe got signed young to Epic as part of a group called The Pack, which was promptly dropped. In 2001, he decided to go solo, so he and his business partner Chilly founded their own label, 1st & 15th, and crossed paths here and there with a then-unknown Kanye West. They put out mixtapes, shopped the solo stuff with whatever clout remained from the Epic deal, caught the eye of label execs, negotiated with several labels including Rocafella, and eventually signed to Arista under LA Reid. Meanwhile, business partner Chilly gets locked up, Jay-Z agrees to step in as executive producer, and LA gets fired from Arista — thereby destroying the label situation. Lupe spits some verses over West’s single, “Diamonds are Forever,” but flips the topic to the bloody diamond trade in Africa. Next thing you know, Kanye makes this the theme of his video and remix — neither of which credit Lupe. Lupe adroitly looks the other way because Kanye offers him a verse on “Touch the Sky” off Kanye’s highly-anticipated Late Registration. Lupe gets crazy hype off the Kanye record and Jay-Z support, and gets the green light on an album with Atlantic. 1st & 15th, in partnership with Atlantic Records, releases “Kick, Push,” a lyrically and musically satisfying joint about a pair of skateboarding lovers — timely, considering the increasing exposure and popularity of skateboarding in the hood. The single is out for over a year, but the album keeps getting pushed back. But very slowly, the song starts bubbling on the airwaves. Finally, Lupe’s debut album, Food and Liquor, gets slated to be released on September 19.

Lupe is at the tipping point. His buzz has steadily accumulated, his crossover appeal is apparent, and — just like Kanye — “nerdiness” is part of the marketing plan (Lupe rocks glasses instead of a backpack). But will any one demographic latch on, or will he slip through the cracks? Things could either blow up like Kanye, or sizzle like Slum Village. He’s definitely got the skills, but as he well knows, there are a lot of other factors in the music business. We’ll know more by Christmas.

I heard a couple verses you did on “Dead Presidents” [classic Jay-Z song from Reasonable Doubt], and there’s one line that I really liked; you said, “I’m white people’s Kool-Aid.” You definitely have a crossover appeal to a broad audience, to a white audience, whatever. In what ways has that helped you, and in what ways has it hurt you?
The line is, “I’m nothin’ sweet, I’m white people’s Kool-Aid, it’s mean.” It goes back to how, like, the running thing in the hood was when your Kool-Aid was bitter, it was white people’s Kool-Aid — because you [followed] the instructions on the pack. You didn’t put tons of sugar, which would be black people’s Kool-Aid.

But, [the crossover] opens you up to a lot of different things. I can’t really [find a circumstance] where it hurts. Unless you let the opinions of people in the hood bring you down. Or on different Internet forums where it’s like, “Well, he’s not real, he’s not from the hood!” If you hold being from the hood as a trophy, and being able to talk about nonsense as a trophy, then it hurts. But I don’t, so I’m like, whatever. Everybody from the hood knows how to tell the story of the hood, one way or another. We know how to tell that, and people have heard that story, and people are sympathetic to it and some people are not. But it opens you up to a lot of different things when you can talk about everybody’s story, and make it relate — you can tell the same story and everybody from every part of the world, every part of society, can relate one way or another, just [by] talking about the basic principles, the basic rigmarole that everybody goes through on a daily basis. That’s what I try and do.

Are there certain things in your past that have made you more secure to expand your horizons and step out of what society would expect of you?
Yeah, my foundations and my origins… I grew up in the hood. Prostitutes, drugs, gangs, that whole situation. But because of my parents, I’ve been privy to so many different people’s cultures. When I was little, I used to meet and talk to people from Palestine, then turn around and talk to people from Pakistan. And I had white friends, black friends, Mexican friends, and all these different friends. I felt that it was my duty to be open, to talk and tell everybody’s story because everybody’s story meant something. A lot of people just downplay other people’s situations, or they oversimplify, like they’ll say all white people got it good and that’s it. And then you turn around like, all black people are gangsters. And you’ll be like all Mexican people work and cook people’s food, and that’s what they do. And you go through that and you’ll be like, “Yo, you’re really oversimplifying and stereotyping.” We all have the same problems. We all have the same wants and needs. A lot of stuff we can’t understand because it’s in a different language, or the way it’s expressed in their culture is different, or the family structure is different. It’s little cultural things and variations that separate us and create these walls and these barriers.

But I knew that since I was a kid. I knew how to bypass those [differences] and be more universal. Like, I don’t mind wearing a suit, if it means I have to wear a suit to go to [a certain] place. If that’s the norm, then that’s what I’ll do, because I know the suit is just the entry fee, almost. And that doesn’t necessarily change you; you can still be the kid from the hood and sit down at this business meeting and be like, “I’m from such and such,” and explain your side of the story.

How about growing up Muslim — how has that shaped the way you look at politics or America? For example, all this stuff going on with Israel and Lebanon, is that something you pay more attention to because you are a Muslim?
Yeah. One thing about being Muslim that opens you up is that Islam is a colorblind religion. And if you take that notion and you really put it inside of you, and you let that be part of your operating system that you go through life in, you start to see that everybody is capable of anything. The most devout Muslim is capable of some of the most heinous crimes on earth. At the same time, too, you give everybody their just due. A lot of the stuff that goes on in the world isn’t religious. From terrorist attacks, to people starving, to straight out nonsensical things — [these can have] nothing to do with religion. It just so happens that the people committing those acts are of a particular religion.

My stance on America doesn’t come from a religious point of view, it comes from a humane point of view. This country was built on the backs of slaves and the exploitation of the original peoples, the Native Americans that were here, and the genocide that was put on them. This country views itself as being above the law, and that’s why it does the things it does and is controlled by crazy corporations; it’s all based on money, and stuff like that. That isn’t a religious thing, that’s just inhumanity at work. So when you look around the world, you see that in other places. You look at situations like in China, where their currency is becoming [more valuable] and the economics [are on the rise] for a very small part of the population. But it’s one of the most craziest, poverty-stricken countries on the face of the planet. It’s built on the backs of these farmers who can’t even feed themselves. When you start to see that stuff, you’re like, “Whoa, that ain’t got nothing to do with religion.”

Take that humanitarian perspective, and let’s look at hip-hop as if it were a country, like China or America. What do you see in hip-hop when you look at it?
Hip-hop has a bunch of cultures in it. People get mad at the South, like, “The South is whack, and [they’re] the reason that hip-hop is dying because the South is making all this trash music.” And that’s coming from the people who used to have it — New York. And it’s just like, yo, that’s just another group of people who create the music that they want to create, and that’s accepted in their peer groups and their clubs and on their street corners, and that’s what people rock to. They don’t want hear mad complex crazy metaphors, they just want to hear a bangin’ bass-heavy beat. So give them that! It just so happens that it got sucked into pop culture and became the norm. And that’s just what it is.

We have a lot of segregation. We have a lot of people who think that what they do is superior and anything that doesn’t fall under that category is inferior. In Chicago, we had this element of being able to talk about the regular things, you know, the Kanye Wests and the Rhymefests. Rhymefest was talking about [being] blue collar and working at a store, and that’s hip-hop to him. And down South they talk about sellin’ dope, or on the East Coast they talk about sellin’ dope but they do it a little bit more flashy. It’s all just different variations on the same subject — a job. We just talk about it differently. To me, it’s healthy. It may be negative, but it’s not all negative. Even though you have all the stuff that’s commercial, and you see the videos everyday, you still have a whole country of hip-hop which is still doing music, but it’s just not out there. It’s on a Myspace page, and they have 500 friends and they’re talking about the most positive things on earth and the most progressive things. But just because it’s not on the main stage, it doesn’t matter. And that’s kind of a problem. But that [goes for] anything. It’s one person with a microphone and a thousand with no microphone, so the one person with the microphone is the dude who runs everything. But what about the people in the back? Maybe they got something to say that’s just as effective or probably even better than what he’s saying. We overlook that.

People just make a general assumption [based upon] what’s on TV or the radio, and say hip-hop is dead or hip-hop is bad. But Mos Def is still making great music. Talib Kweli is still making great music. He probably won’t make MTV crazy, but he’s still making good, credible music. You know, positive, expressive music. And outside of him, you’ve got all these kids in the underground making all this great, positive music. At the same time, too, you still got kids in the underground who make some very violent-ass music. But it’s still viable and it’s still healthy.

I was trying to figure out your trajectory through the music industry. You had a deal with Epic and then that fell through. What’s the story? Were you signed to the Roc at one point, or…
The chain of causation goes like this: I was signed to Epic Records when I was 18 with a group called The Pack. The group fell through because of mismanagement and just overall bad, kind of, music. And right after that I started my own company, in 2001, 1st & 15th, with my partner Chilly. During that period of time, the first nine months, we were being courted by a lot of people off the reputation that we was building from being on Epic — me as an MC and my partner Chilly’s business connections, and stuff like that. And so one of the people that came was Rocafella. Jay-Z was like, “Yo, I want to sign you to Rocafella.” We turned that down because they couldn’t give us the situation that we wanted, which was a production situation as opposed to me just being signed as an artist. So we eventually signed to Arista Records as a production company. This is like 2002.

I heard that Kanye was at your showcase for Arista.
Yeah.

Was he trying to get a deal with Arista at the time?
He was trying to get a deal with anybody that would rock with him! People were cutting him down for being an artist, because it was like, “You just need to stay a producer.” He was just trying to go wherever they would accept him, that’s where he was at. And we actually kind of set that situation up, with him coming up to Arista and trying to get signed up at Arista.

It must have been crazy to see him blow up after all that.
Not really. Kanye always had something. He always had a drive and his music always had energy. He was working on an album prior to College Dropout, and that was the album he was shopping. He had all these amazing records. Kanye’s music always had this certain quality where you knew it was going to be something someday. It really wasn’t a surprise, it was just a matter of him getting the attention. And when he got it, he took off.

So with your label, 1st & 15th, do you actively have other artists that you’re cultivating? Or, for now, are you just focusing on launching yourself?
No, besides myself there’s another MC and a singer by the name of Gemini. He sings and he rhymes. There’s a female MC by the name of Shayla G, and there’s a female R&B group called Risque, who we’re actually promoting now. You’ll turn on the radio in Chicago and they’ll play my single and they’ll turn around play their record. We’re running as much as we can. And we have writers and producers, and a lot of the stuff is based on the success of what my project is doing and what it has done. From the billboards, to the Reebok deals, to all the press we’ve been getting, we’ve been utilizing that and funneling our artists through.

Are you trying to create a label that’s as diverse as your influences?
Well, I don’t want to be a tyrant and be like, “You should make this music.” Nah, tell your own story. I definitely want to branch out to some jazz, or maybe some rock. We actually worked on some stuff before with a couple metal bands, and some more mainstream rock stuff. Funny thing about the music business, it’ll come to you, it’s just a matter of you executing it. We got a lot of stuff on the table.

In your flow, I hear a lot of Mos, I hear a lot of Jay, I hear some Big L…a lot of focus on wordplay. I was listening to one track, “Twilight Zone,” and lyrically I thought it was pretty ridiculous. How did that come about? Did you write that in the studio or on pen and paper and bring it in? How do you write stuff like that?
I was actually running. I was jogging and I came up with the first couple lines, and then I just built it. A lot of stuff, especially on the mixtapes, I’ll build it at the microphone. I’ll have like four or five lines in my head, and then throughout the day just add on. I might write pieces of it down and basically just finish it off at the mic. “Twilight Zone” was one of those records.

My writing process is weird. Sometimes I feel that I can get more intricate and concrete when I sit down and actually write. When I write, it might take me like two, three hours to write a verse. So I’m constantly repeating it, going back over it and changing it, as opposed to when I’m at the mic I might just come up with something in like 10 seconds and lay it, and then go to the next line, and not really go back on it, know what I’m saying? Just kind of leave it rough and unfinished.

When you were talking about running, that reminded me of something I heard about Outkast, that when they were younger they used to practice rhyming while jogging, and that’s how they developed their flow.
I used to study cats. We used to do raps for our practice. And I still practice now. Our practice was remaking songs. Like, we would make songs rapping just like Ghostface or we would make entire mixtapes just rapping like Bizzy, I mean Biggie. And I say “we” because I was in a group in high school, and that’s what we used to do. We used to find a rapper with the most intricate, crazy wordplay, delivery, flow, cadence, whatever, and we would mimic it, and try to match their punch. And then we would take that and add it to the flow that we normally used.

Have you ever tried to do the Jay-Z and Biggie thing of not writing, just sitting in the booth and creating it?
Yeah, I’ll do that. Even with Jay, there’s a period of preparation. His is just kind of small. It’ll be like 15 minutes, as opposed to me taking an hour. And I won’t write, I’ll go to the mic. You may have an opening line or first four bars, so you lay that and then just start brainstorming. It’s not really like a freestyle where it’s just straight up rappin’, rappin’, rappin’. You might record four bars then stop, come up with the next two lines, and before you know it it’ll be an hour and you’ve got a whole song.

You’ve said in interviews that Jay-Z has been dropping a lot of wisdom on you. Has there been anything that he said that stands out in your mind?
Yeah, he told me “don’t chase radio” a long time ago. And that’s what I did. “Kick, Push” wasn’t an attempt to go get radio. The bulk of the album wasn’t to get radio, it’s just to make good songs — the radio will come to you. It branched out to more than that; not from him, he just said it once and that was it. But for me I just took it and ran with it. Even in interviews, even the way I carry myself in everything I do, I don’t chase the limelight. I’ll sit back and look and be like, “I don’t even feel famous.” And there will be, like, a thousand kids down the street chasing me or something like that. But I don’t carry myself like I want that. And it probably comes from being in the music business for so long — you know that it’s phony. It’s a phony institution; it’s not meant to last for that long.

What do you mean?
I was brought up Muslim, and one of the things in Islam is that this world is phony. It’s not real. It’s illusion. That carries over into the music business. A lot of success is contrived and doctored. Like, take your favorite R&B singer, right? And they sing a song. And you’re like, “This song means so much to me,” and you find out that they didn’t write it.

Right.
And the person who wrote it had to teach them to have that emotion to carry that song off. When I was a kid, I thought everybody wrote their own [material] and that was them expressing themselves truthfully. “Nah, somebody just wrote it and we sung it.” And you start seeing the club scene and everything that goes along with it, you’re just like, “Yo, this is phony.” [There are] relationships with different people within the business who’ll only rock with you because you’re hot at the time — and when you’re not, they’re going to vanish. Phones are going to stop ringing, and you’re going to stop getting interviews.

The album [Food and Liquor] came out September 19. What was up with the delays?
1st & 15th pushed it back because of industry stuff — it’s all my company, as opposed to Atlantic Records pushing it back. [For a long time] we just didn’t feel like we had enough concrete presence to actually come out and do what we wanted to do. “Kick, Push” was the first single, and we dropped that a year ago. But we [1st & 15th and Atlantic Records] both have to be in agreement; we’ve got to have some common ground. We both do our checklists, and when those things ain’t in place, we push it back.