Feeling like it’s impossible to say something about Lupe Fiasco that may not have already been said, I turned to my wife, whose knowledge of hip-hop could be best represented by a drop in a thimble (versus mine, perhaps a shot-glass’ worth).
“What do you know about Lupe Fiasco?,” I asked her.
“I know he was never called an asshole,” she says.
Of course, she was invoking a lyric about Pablo Picasso by Jonathan Richman of The Modern Lovers, and even though her pop-culture malapropism was hilarious, it doesn’t shed much light on who Chicago’s Lupe Fiasco really is. And given what we know about Picasso now, Richman might have been wrong about that anyway.
Born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, Lupe Fiasco is one of the best hip-hop talents to emerge from Chicago. But I still feel like he never got his due for any number of reasons, some of which could be my personal tunnel vision. When his now-classic debut album, “Food & Liquor” dropped twenty years ago, I was focused more on nursery rhymes, not stepping on Legos and finding the right classical-music videos to lull my six-year old to sleep. I was also trying to connect Sonic Youth’s “Sonic Nurse” to “Rather Ripped,” and buried in obliviousness while my first marriage was falling apart. So I was preoccupied, not to make excuses.
Accolades for his 2006 debut were plentiful—and with a discovery story that saw him heard (but not seen) by MTV, shepherded by Def Jam president Jay-Z, who helped him to sign with Atlantic, it was an easy buzz to amplify. The album featured production contributions from superstars like The Neptunes, Kanye West, Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park), and Mr. Beyonce himself, who co-produced the record with longtime collaborator Charles “Chilly” Patton and Fiasco. Rolling Stone called him one of ten talents to watch that year, with “Food & Liquor” “the year’s most hotly anticipated hip-hop debut.”
“Food & Liquor” entered the Billboard 200 at number eight and earned four Grammy nominations, including one for Best Rap Album (though Pharrell, T.I., and The Roots must have made the competition difficult—Ludacris won). While Fiasco took no hardware home in 2007, the single “Daydreamin,” featuring Jill Scott, won Best Urban/Alternative Song at the Grammys in 2008.
Altogether now, Lupe Fiasco has released nine studio albums, to various critical and commercial acclaim, including the also-stellar sequel to “Food & Liquor.” So why isn’t he as commonly referred to as one of Chicago’s brightest hip-hop hopes, like Common?
Common has mostly been a non-controversial figure within hip-hop and contemporary American politics (unless you ask a right-wing pundit). In contrast, Lupe Fiasco told Shira Lazar of CBS in 2011 that “In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is [then-president] Obama, and the United States of America.” While he went on to explain that he believes that the policies of the U.S. government are what inspires terrorists, that statement taken alone exemplified how some figures in the genre were turning against Obama at the time, just as the administration was strategically sticking to the so-called “middle of the road.”
Fiasco had planted his political theory with “Food & Liquor”‘s “American Terrorist,” but by 2011’s album “Lasers” it took on a new dimension. On the song “Words I Never Said,” Lupe Fiasco raps: “Gaza Strip was getting bombed/ Obama didn’t say shit/ That’s why I ain’t vote for him/ next one either.” Given that, it must have been a surprise (or a “big tent,” conciliatory gesture?) when Fiasco was invited to perform in D.C. in conjunction with Obama’s second inauguration. After doubling down by telling the crowd at the Hamilton Hotel that he didn’t vote for Obama, he launched into “Words I Never Said,” singing the track for over thirty minutes before organizers pulled the plug and security escorted him off the stage.
Although Jay-Z’s cred had helped Fiasco get “total creative control” when he signed to Atlantic, the major label dragged their heels on releasing “Lasers,” allegedly not hearing the potential for a single and trying to get him to record tracks penned by other writers. 2015’s “Tetsuo and Youth” album underperformed and was his last for Atlantic, which apparently was not an amicable split, to put it lightly. At the time, Billboard called Lupe Fiasco’s relationship with Atlantic “one of the most contentious artist-label relationships in recent history.” He also made news at the time for having Twitter feuds with Kid Cudi and Azealia Banks, promising to quit the social platform (now known as X) at the time.
But what’s he been up to since then?
In 2022, MIT asked Lupe Fiasco to teach a course on Rap Theory and Practice for their MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars Program. He was named a Saybrook Associate Fellow at Yale in 2023, and is continuing his fellowship there. Last fall he joined the Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute faculty as a visiting professor to teach a rap course for their new Bachelor of Music in Hip-Hop program.
He’s been touring behind his excellent 2025 “Samurai” album, released via his own 1st & 15th label, and is now touring in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of his stellar “Food & Liquor” debut with two dates in Chicago, the first of which is already sold out.
Lupe Fiasco plays The Salt Shed (indoors), 1357 North Elston, on June 11 and June 12 at 7 pm.
