original airdate January 9, 2008
Mogul Jay-Z calls rapper Lupe Fiasco a breath of fresh air. Known for thought-provoking lyricism, Fiasco is a Chicago native and devout Muslim who was exposed to many different cultures as a child. He began taking his craft seriously at age 17 and went from underground phenomenon to mainstream success. His new release, the concept CD "The Cool," is a follow-up to his Grammy-nominated debut, "Food & Liquor." Fiasco is also co-founder and VP of 1st & 15th, a record label under Atlantic Records.
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Rapper discusses how he sneaks difficult, social subject matter into his music. (3:03)
Lupe Fiasco
Tavis: Lupe Fiasco is a rapidly rising hip hop artist who has just released his critically acclaimed second CD. It's called "The Cool." Friday night in Seattle he kicks off a nationwide tour in support of the new disc. Next month, he's up for a Grammy award for his performance with Jill Scott. From "The Cool," here now some of the video for the single, "Superstar."
[Clip]
Tavis: First of all, an honor to meet you, Lupe.
Lupe Fiasco: Oh, appreciate it, sir. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you here. I was saying to you before we came on the air that one of my dear friends, Dr. Cornel West, and I have had so many dialogues about you. This guy loves you. And he's the one who turned me on to you, quite frankly.
Fiasco: Yeah, he's responsible for the title of the disc, actually.
Tavis: In what way? "The Cool?"
Fiasco: Me, my mother, and aunt all went to go see you guys speak in, like, 2004 in Chicago.
Tavis: You were in the audience that night?
Fiasco: Yeah.
Tavis: On the Pass the Mic tour.
Fiasco: Yeah.
Tavis: Wow.
Fiasco: And he said - somebody asked him, he said, "What's the solution?" And he said, "Well, I think one solution is we have to make it hip to be square. We have to make it cool. The things that are cool, we have to make them uncool." And I was thinking, like, hey. And that has become, like, my modus operandi in my music, to kind of transform the cool things into the uncool.
Tavis: Well I'm sure Doc will be honored to hear that. When I got the CD, before I popped it in, Lupe, as I typically do, I opened it up, pulled the wrapper off of it, opened it up, pulled out the - you know - and started checking it out. It looks - and people at home, of course, can't see this - but it looks much darker. The artwork, the color, the design. I didn't know what to expect, but I thought it was going to be dark. Once I popped it in, the music for me didn't necessarily match the look of the CD. Is that just me, or?
Fiasco: No, no, no. It comes from two places. It's a dark album in some aspects where the subject matter of it is dark. So even if you look through songs like "Superstar," songs like I want to say, "Fighter," songs like "Intruder Alert" that are on the album, the concepts are very dark. The music may be very mainstream or it may be very kind of poppy, almost, in some aspects.
But the subject matter, such as "Intruder Alert," it's about rape. And then there's another - the third verse is about immigration and the second verse is about drug abuse. But it's put on these kind of bright, kind of almost, like, happy, kind of music beds to just kind of - so it sneaks past. So it sneaks on to radio.
Because I think if I kind of matched the music with the actual subject matter, then it would be dark. But it would close a lot of doors. So that's kind of my little sneaky espionage a little bit.
Tavis: Okay. (Laughter) You explained it, I get it now. Because what I was hearing - and you explained it better than I ever could, obviously. Since it's your CD, you should be able to do that. But what I was hearing didn't match the cover. But I guess the only thing I would say to your comment about the lyrical content being dark is that I think it's courageous.
This album reminds me of a Marvin Gaye, "What's Going On," it reminds me of a Stevie Wonder, "Inner Visions." It reminds me of those concept records that had something to say about the issues of the day. Was that the intent here?
Fiasco: Yeah, definitely. The actual concept of "The Cool" is from a song on my first album called "The Cool," which is about a hustler who gets killed and he comes back to life and digs his way out of his own grave, and it goes, like, into this whole kind of thriller almost kind of scene. And so I kind of reinvented the character on this album, and it's actually played by Kadeem Hardison, and if you look closely, "The Cool" character - what's up, Kadeem? - from "A Different World."
Tavis: A different world, yeah.
Fiasco: And I surrounded him from different other characters, The Streets and The Game, and they're actually, like, kind of like physical incarnations of what it is to be cool or what is street life. What is the game? What is caught up in the game? Okay, what does the game look like? So I kind of gave them all, like, walking, talking, I gave them physical characteristics and kind of told a lot of stories through them.
So I told the story of what happens to the child who grows up in a fatherless home in the Black community? Oh, it may turn out to be that he's this hustler. Or let's tell the story of AIDS. And we tell that story through this character. So it's almost like AIDS is one of her physical attributes. So it's complex as far as, like, concepting, but in execution, it comes out very basic.
Tavis: How do you take, to your point, though, Lupe, how do you take a concept that is complex, a concept that is challenging, put it on a record where it sounds good, where it sneaks its way, as you might put it, onto radio, and yet it doesn't come across as being preachy. Because if you do that, that is the death of you, as you well know.
Fiasco: I try to remain unbiased. I try and tell the story for what it is. I'm trying to just present the facts. And I'm very conscious of not using the facts that originate from a bias, whether it's racism or classism or elitism or whatever. I try and just use the very basic human social kind of things and then present them. And so it doesn't come off - to some it does come off preachy, because it's, like, so much.
It's like oh, why you keep telling us this? And then it'll be, like, well, I'm not telling you anything. It's really just this character. The song isn't even about me. It's really this character talking. But it's not that hard, I've been practicing for about four or five years to kind of get it right.
Tavis: I mentioned earlier Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder in terms of the concept, in terms of a record that's actually saying something over some pretty tight beats. But I think I read somewhere, Marvin and Stevie notwithstanding, that you, like, were a Pink Floyd fan back in the day? Did I get that right?
Fiasco: Yeah.
Tavis: I'm trying to square Lupe Fiasco and Pink Floyd.
Fiasco: I think that's all due to my father, rest in peace. He was very eclectic in a lot of ways in life - the Black Panther party over here, an African drummer and karate expert. And one of his things was music; he had a wide selection of music. So since I was a little boy I was always privy to Ravi Shankar. So my first musical experiences were Tchaikovsky and Beethoven and the soundtrack to "Star Wars," and then the soundtrack to "Rocky."
And then it was like oh, here's this "Foreigner." And then it's like oh, here's a little "Public Enemy." Oh, and NWA. So it was a mishmash as far as how I was introduced to music, so I got a lot of influences.
Tavis: How has that impacted your art form and what you do, your style?
Fiasco: Makes it very easy for me to go and acquire other genres of music, certain particulars of them, and bring them into my music, and make it work. So it's easy for me to go get, like, the song called "Hello, Goodbye" on the album, which is a straight rock record. It was actually - the music bed was actually on a rock album. And went and was, like, yeah, I could rap other. So it's being able to articulate that and see the similarities between hip hop and techno and jazz and everything else, and being able to kind of bridge them together.
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